Slow Art Day

Visitor pausing @ CJM Yud Gallery

I have been invited by the Contemporary Jewish Museum to be the guide at CJM for their participation in the  International Slow Art Day http://www.slowartday.com/ happening tomorrow.

Touring Peter Hurd painting @ deYoung

As a Spritboatist, I am inspired by the call to attention and the art of pausing that can enlighten my own practices. The Slow Art Day was conceived and initiated by a CEO businessman, Phil Terry, who had an epiphany in 2008 when he discovered that close looking at a painting over a longer time gave him so much satisfaction that could carry over and benefit his businessman's mind. His shared his experience with others and more people found great value in this approach and it grew exponentially each year till today when there are now 235 venues for tomorrow.
As I read more about this annual event, I was taken with this unfolding story and these words-

No matter what we’re doing, attention is very, very powerful. The research is clear now, multi-tasking is a myth, you can’t really pay attention to more than one thing  at a time in any kind of quality way. You can juggle balls but you are going to drop one. So it’s much better to be monogamous-in-the-moment. Paying attention to attention, and what attention can do to qualitatively transform our lives, the relationships we have, the products and services that we create, the relationships we have with customers. In a deep way there is something really important here about attention. It turns out art is a terrific way to learn the power of attention.   Phil Terry, CEO of Collaborative Gain

It gives me pause in my own practice of touring with visitors to consider how I can take advantage of this call to awareness.  It will be a great day for touring art where we stop at the exquisite miniature paintings of Arthur Szyk- www.szyk.com/  and stop in the Yud space to enjoy the playful geometry.

People are encouraged find a museum venue listed on the website, and sign on to tour 4 -5 works of art for 10 minutes per stop, taking the time to really see into the work and let the art talk to them. The follow-up that enriches the experience is spending time after the tour at lunch to share out what was revealed. 

When I looked at the locations where this is happening tomorrow, I was so pleased to see how many were located in Rome, Italy. It would be wonderful to be cloned and transported to Rome to experience the Slow Art Day in one of those great churches.