This post comes to us from WFPL Arts and Humanities Reporter Elizabeth Kramer.
The Speed Art Museum’s Friday night party, Art After Dark, was pure spectacle. It packed the place with well over 1,000 people who all ambled around the many cavernous as well as the not-so-cavernous rooms to take in actors
reading a Hunter S. Thompson article, scenes performed by a group of other thespians, solo musicians and bands, including Wax Fang. The result: a definite circus atmosphere. (As of Monday, the museum had no word on how many new members it had managed to sign up that night.)
Oh, and there were pit stops peppered throughout the facility offering food and beverages. (A big thumbs up for the gelato, by the way).
All the commotion kind of overshadowed two experimental exhibitions — Moving Movie Louisville and Louisville 27: Community. The movies were videos, which volunteer filmmakers made on Flip cameras, to document their daily movement through Louisville. The images of Louisville and the camera movement intrigued me, but the museum’s acoustics with so many people talking kept me from being able to hear and really take in the films. The second exhibition included nearly 270 donated works offered for sale at $27 apiece. (The Speed says this money is going to help fund the museum’s education activities.) By the end of the evening, the museum had sold more than 100 of those works.
This experiment also was the focus of several dozen artists who donated 80 works made with baloney, according to artist Debra Clem, who also participated. The museum says it only logged 75 boloney works and hadn’t yet counted how many of them had sold.
As you may remember, the idea for the boloney art developed after many artists read the museum’s call for art that started with “If you love Louisville…” before asking artists to donate work. Their ire at being asked to give away their work for free launched several
editorials in the daily newspaper and a Facebook page. (Clem says that artists want to continue using the page, which now has more than 300 fans, as a forum for discussing the role of professional artists vis-à-vis fundraising practices.)
All in all, the Art-After-Dark spectators didn’t pay too much attention to the baloney art, what with all the other commotion working to grab their attention. Some said they sympathized somewhat with the artists, while many others didn’t pay much attention or talked about it as a non-issue. I heard a few people say, “If they don’t like the idea, then they don’t have to participate” (or something to that effect).
And what did The Speed Museum learn from this Art-After-Dark experience? Well, staff didn’t mention anything about the baloney art. They did say, however, they learned it’s important to keep a lot of salt around in case of snow and ice. Oh, and make sure to have enough gelato, because some people got very disappointed when it ran out.
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The Speed Art Museum’s Friday night party, Art After Dark, was pure spectacle. It packed the place with well over 1,000 people who all ambled around the many cavernous as well as the not-so-cavernous rooms to take in actors reading a Hunter S. Thompson article, scenes performed by a group of other thespians, solo musicians and bands, including Wax Fang. The result: a definite circus atmosphere. (As of Monday, the museum had no word on how many new members it had managed to sign up that night,)
Oh, and there were pit stops peppered throughout the facility offering food and beverages. (A big thumbs up for the gelato, by the way).
All the commotion kind of overshadowed two experimental exhibitions — “Moving Movie Louisville” and “Louisville 27: Community.” The movies were videos, which volunteer filmmakers made on Flip cameras, to document their daily movement through Louisville. The images of Louisville and the camera movement intrigued me, but the museum’s acoustics with so many people talking kept me from being able to hear and really take in the films. The second exhibition was of nearly 270 donated works offered for sale at $27 apiece. By the end of the evening, the museum had sold more than 100 of those works.
This experiment also was the focus of several dozen artists who donated 80 works made with baloney, according to artist Debra Clem, who also participated. The museum says it only logged 75 boloney works and hadn’t yet counted how many of them had sold.
As you may remember, the idea for the boloney art developed after a many artists read the museum’s call for art that started with “If you love Louisville…” before asking donate to donate work. Their ire at being asked to give away their work for free launched several editorials in the daily newspaper and a Facebook page. (Clem says that artists want to continue using the page, which now has more than 300 fans, as a forum for discussing the role of professional artists vis-à-vis fundraising practices.)
All in all, the Art-After-Dark spectators didn’t pay too much attention to the baloney art, what with all the other commotion working to grab their attention. Some said they sympathized somewhat with the artists, while many others didn’t pay much attention or talked about it as a nonissue. I heard a few people say, “If they don’t like the idea, then they don’t have to participate,” (or something to that effect).
And what did The Speed Museum learn from this Art After Dark experience? Well, staff didn’t mention anything about the baloney art, but did say they learned it’s important to keep a lot of salt around in case of snow and ice. Oh, and make sure to have enough gelato, because some people got very disappointed when it ran out.