Nation-wide Public Art Show On Display With The ART EVERYWHERE Event

An historic nation-wide public art initiative kicked off in New York City’s Times Square this past weekend and it is an incredibly amazing event. Billed as “the largest outdoor art show ever conceived”, the Art Everywhere project is a public celebration of great American art exhibited on thousands of "out of home" (OOH) advertising displays across America. Over 50,000 images will be presented on billboards, bus shelters, subway posters, special digital displays, outside walls of office buildings and much more. As a major art fan, this is very exciting news to me!

Five of America’s leading art museums--LACMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Dallas Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art--offered up hundreds of their collections' standout works that represent American history and culture, and a voting pool of more than 180,000 people from across the country selected the top 58 pieces. A few artists were so popular that voters picked multiple examples of their work including 19th century landscape painter Winslow Homer’s The Cotton Pickers, Breezing Up (A Fair Wind) and The Water Fan and Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks and Early Sunday Morning. Expect to see Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, Grant Wood's American Gothic and what is considered Gilbert Stuart's greatest of his many portraits of George Washington among the selected works.

Dallas Museum of Art Director Max Anderson says, “Most Americans aren’t taught about American art in school, and this project is intended to put discussion about art back in the classroom—and at the dinner table, water cooler, and car pool.” So, keep your eyes open everywhere you look now through August 31st (when the event ends) since you just may see your favorite piece of art--or find a new one--on a Metro train, hanging on the wall of a Starbucks or perched on a billboard along the freeway. If you do spot a piece that makes you think or laugh or is in an unusual place, please snap a pic and send it to me and I'll publish it on my Facebook page.