Slow Art Day designed to create deeper appreciation

If there’s a message in Saturday’s activities at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, it’s this: Slow down.

Sara Segerlin, the museum’s senior educator of public programs, nearly every day watches someone walk in to the museum in Bentonville and speed around.

“They think they’ve seen it all,” she says.

While value and beauty can be found in those quick glances, a movement both at the Crystal Bridges and throughout the broader museum world seeks tochange that hurried philosophy.

Crystal Bridges has this year agreed to be one of the host sites for the international Slow Art Day event, which preaches experiencing art at a much more relaxed pace. As a participant, Crystal Bridges will focus on just a select few pieces from the museum’s vast permanent collection. That Slow Art is a four-hour-long event should tell participants something: They will spend a long time with each piece. It comes in sharp contrast to the 17-second viewing average reported by ArtNews.com.

Several additional elements are designed to hold the attention of visitors at each stop during Slow Art Day. Live classical music provided byUniversity of Arkansas students will accompany a look at Mary Cassatt’s “Summertime”; a facilitated discussion will take place around Joseph Stella’s “Red Flower, 1929”; and a reading of works by the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau will take place near “Kindred Spirits” by Asher Brown Durand, a contemporary and friend to many transcendentalist authors.

In line with the ideas of the national event, Crystal Bridges will also offer a food element courtesy of its restaurant, Eleven. Just like studying a painting in great detail will likely reveal the individual brush strokes used to complete it, Crystal Bridges director of culinary CaseDighero says studying a meal changes its value.

“Slow Food is a result of thinking about your meal. If you think ‘What was the chef thinking?’ all the sudden, this dish becomes more meaningful,” Dighero says.

Dighero has invited two locals chefs to Eleven for Slow Food presentations. Jerrmy Gawthorp of Greenhouse Grille will discuss slow pickling procedures, and Tammy Varney of Meridienne Dessert Salon will demonstrate making a cake the slow way - with flour and eggs and sugar instead of a boxed mix.

But Dighero and Segerlin believe a slowdown is in order.

“We want the concept of it to be carried through our educationprograms,” Segerlin says. “This is a community space. It becomes a place for people to grow in their minds and hearts.”