International Slow Art Day is April 11

International Slow Art Day is April 11

calendar icon07 Apr 2015    

Lincoln, Neb.--International Slow Art Day is Saturday, April 11, 2015. The global all-volunteer event has a simple mission, to help more people discover for themselves the joy of looking at and loving art.
    
Three institutions in Lincoln will host events for Slow Art Day: the Great Plains Art Museum, Elder Gallery at Nebraska Wesleyan University, and the Sheldon Museum of Art. Students, faculty, and staff members of the UNL Social Practice Coalition, a group founded to research and enact social practice art, will help host events throughout the day to facilitate slow looking.
    
Why slow? The event’s founders believe that when people look slowly at a piece of art they make discoveries, the most important of which is that they can see and experience art without an “expert” (or expertise).
    
The basic structure of Slow Art Day asks participants to look deeply at five pieces of art and then to discuss their impressions over lunch or coffee. Lincoln’s Slow Art Day events will build on that structure to include gallery tours, meditation activities, and even a silent film screening.
    
The day begins quietly at the Sheldon, with morning meditation and a sculpture garden tour. The 10 a.m. meditation session will be led by Darin Peev of UNL’s Diamond Way Meditation Group. Erin Poor, the Sheldon Museum of Art's assistant curator of education, will then facilitate a discussion of two or three works in the museum’s sculpture garden.
    
UNL SPC member Joyce Bingeman, a graduate student in printmaking, is excited to be leading a discussion of Abstract Expressionist paintings in the Sheldon’s permanent collection at 11 a.m., followed by a “slow lunch.” “These are works that I’ve always loved, pieces that are exciting to me,” she said. “I’m happy to share them and talk about them with the community.”
    
Lexi Bass, a digital instruction specialist with the UNL Department of Arts and Architecture who is herself a film maker, will lead a discussion Saturday afternoon following a matinée screening of the silent film In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914) at the Sheldon at 2 p.m. The feature-length film, which was written and directed by photographer Edward Curtis, fictionalizes the life of the Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl) peoples of the Queen Charlotte Strait region of the Central Coast of British Columbia, Canada and acted entirely by Kwakwaka'wakw natives. The screening is made possible by the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center.
    
At the Great Plains Art Museum, visitors are invited to consider a selection of works from the historic textiles exhibit Homefront & Battlefield: Quilts and Context in the Civil War. The 11 a.m. tour will be followed by coffee and discussion of the work at 12:45 p.m..
    
Amanda Breitbach, a graduate student in photography and member of the UNL SPC, will ask viewers to consider the recent work of Lincoln artist Sarah Berkeley, on exhibit now at the Elder Gallery at Nebraska Wesleyan University. Berkeley’s show, I Just Work Here, includes video, photography, collage, and participatory elements. This event, which begins at 11 a.m., includes a catered lunch. Participants can RSVP at http://www.eventbrite.com/e/slow-art-day-sarah-berkeley-i-just-work-here-tickets-16372427371.

For more information about Slow Art Day activities in Lincoln, visit https://www.facebook.com/events/689447711177464/.