On August 4th people in Times Square were exposed to a unique art experience–digital billboards were changed from their usual advertisements to iconic American art pieces. This art intervention in a public space won’t stop there and will also include a print campaign that will be seen on public transportation and throughout the city and in other locations. This is being done through the efforts of Art Everywhere US a collaboration between five major art museums and the Outdoor Advertising Association of America. According to an article in the LA Times, the campaign will run from August 4-31 and will feature fifty eight images which will be displayed in close to 50,000 commercial locations in all fifty states. All the images were voted on by the public and the museums involved include The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Dallas Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The event was first conceived of by Richard Reed who produced a similar campaign in the United Kingdom in 2013. This included a similar collaboration between the Tate Modern, Art Fund and the UK out of Ihome advertising industry. Artists in the US nation wide campaign include: Andy Warhol, Winslow Homer, Cindy Sherman and John Singer Sargent among others.

Art Everywhere U.S. Times Square installation, featuring Winslow Homer’s “The Water Fan” (1898-99, The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Dorothy A., John A. Jr., and Christopher Holabird in memory of William and Mary Holabird)

The Whitney Museum’s Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs Donna DeSilvo said,
“The Whitney Museum of American Art is proud to be part of Art Everywhere US, and especially to see it launch in our home city of New York. It is a project that situates extraordinary images by great American artists in the unique cultural landscape that is the United States.  It’s always exciting to think about encountering art in the course of everyday life, whether inside or outside.”

DeSilvo is right in saying that Art Everywhere US does promote a way of thinking about art in an everyday context. While this is an exciting prospect for people to encounter art in a new way, it also points to larger issues surrounding public art in general. Living in a city such as New York where public art based work is on the rise through the work of organizations such as Creative Time and the Art Production Fund among others, I wonder where Art Everywhere US fits into this larger milieu.

The history of public art in New York is extremely rich and in thinking about the scale to which Art Everywhere US was produced, it does seem to challenge the current model. On some level Art Everywhere US could offer a different way to frame the way in which public art is made. However, given the fact that the images were crowd sourced, voted on, and came from prominent American museum collections which were than reproduced also seems to render the role of the artist as invisible on some level. Or perhaps efforts such as these are helping to re-imagine what the art making process art is, how art is produced and the ways in which it is viewed.

While efforts such as these may offer another way to think about public art and the way in which it can be interacted with on a daily basis, these are images of famous art pieces that have been reproduced on a massive scale and have been strategically placed in locations throughout the US. Although the logistics of this program are quite impressive, I am still reluctant to completely back this model. Art Everywhere US is doing important work in terms of situating art against a quotidian backdrop, however there is still work to be done in terms of how projects such as these either are creating new models or simply working within the confines of existing ones.

Art Everywhere US is on view through August 31. To visit it’s interactive map click here to learn about where various artworks are located near you. The project is also encouraging people to use the hashtag #ArtEverywhereUS
–Anni Irish