Slow Art Day Vienna

Intervention on the perception of art.

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the pure abundance of sensory impressions that an art museum offers?
Research has shown that the average museum visitor spends about eleven seconds looking at a piece of art. It’s no surprise that details are hardly recalled after skipping through an entire exhibition. The Slow Art Day is an event that seeks to focus on how visitors engage with physical works of art in depth.  It emphasizes quality of the art experience rather than quantity – conscious perception of and indulgence in art instead of mere consummation.

One day each year people all over the world visit local museums and galleries to look at art slowly. Participants look at five works of art for 10 minutes each and then meet over lunch to talk about their experience. That’s it. Simple by design, the goal is to focus on art and the art of seeing.

ArtCognito brought the Slow Art Day to Vienna for the first time in 2015. As a unique opportunity, selected paintings will also be analysed from a cognitive science perspective with eye-tracking methods at the University of Vienna, and the results will be shared and discussed with the participants on site.