Slow Art Day invites Salem gallery visitors to take extra time with pieces
In galleries all around the world on Saturday – from Mexico to South Korea to Belgium – people will be taking their time to observe art. Ten minutes for a single painting, to be exact.
For the past 15 years Slow Art Day has invited people around the world to choose a piece of art that speaks to them and set a timer to observe it in silence. This year, for the first time, Salem will participate with events at the Salem Art Association, Salem on the Edge and the Salem Public Library.
Salem organizer Susan Napack called the decision to get involved a no-brainer. She chairs the Salem Public Art Commission which oversees the city’s collection of paintings and sculptures in public buildings and spaces,
“There’s some really very important and interesting and beautiful pieces in the collection, especially those at the library, that we really wanted to make people aware of,” Napack said.
The idea came when Napack’s book club read “All the Beauty in the World,” a book by a former Metropolitan Museum guard who spent a decade intensively studying its paintings during eight-hour shifts. A member of the book club brought up Slow Art Day, and Napack thought it would be a great way to get the community to engage with public art in the city.
The library’s Slow Art Day event on Saturday, April 5, will be a close study of paintings by three local artists. It will go from 11 a.m. to noon. Organizers will set a timer for groups to observe paintings for 10 minutes at a time, and will encourage them to discuss the experience together afterward.
The library’s pieces were curated to be on display together, Napack said. One is by Salem artist Nancy Lindburg, whose work explores color, texture and pattern, and the other two are surprises that will offer interesting shapes, colors and movement to consider.
Napack, an artist herself, said she’s rarely spent such a long time observing one painting. She tried it out herself on the library’s pieces in preparation for Saturday’s event.
“It was like listening to music,” she said. “I just felt like the more I looked at the artwork, the more it sort of spoke to me. And I saw different levels of things, and I noticed things that I wouldn’t have noticed before.”
Napack encouraged other venues to participate on Saturday, too, expanding the opportunities for people to deliberately pause and observe works.
The Salem Art Association, at 600 Mission St. S.E., will host the event from noon to 4 p.m. Salem on the Edge in downtown is also listed as a participant, and is open from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday. The gallery is located at 156 Liberty St. N.E. Entrance to both is free.
Napack said the Salem events are an experiment, and she looks forward to hearing how people react. She encouraged people to come, even if 10 minutes of studying a still painting feels daunting.
“Anything goes. You can have whatever response. There’s no right response to art,” she said. “The only response, to me, that’s wrong is no response at all.”
And, if the viewer feels nothing, that’s still a chance to engage with art.
“You have to say, maybe, ‘Why?’” she said.
Contact reporter Abbey McDonald: [email protected] or 503-575-1251.
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Abbey McDonald joined the Salem Reporter in 2022. She previously worked as the business reporter at The Astorian, where she covered labor issues, health care and social services. A University of Oregon grad, she has also reported for the Malheur Enterprise, The News-Review and Willamette Week.
