Takeaway Art Exhibit

The Jewish Museum in NYC, which is a terrific art institution, is doing a show next month in which forty contemporary artists will create over 400,000 artworks that visitors will be encouraged to “take away” with them when they visit the show.

This exhibit was inspired by a similar show that took place at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 1995.

To help fund the production costs of all of this takeaway art, the museum has launched a Kickstarter, which the Gotham Gal and I both backed yesterday.

Backers can select from a number of these takeaway art works as rewards. There are also some great in person talks with the show’s curators in the rewards.

Here’s the project video in case this project interests you like it did us.

If you want to participate in the funding of this show, you can back the Kickstarter here.

#art

Comments (Archived):

  1. awaldstein

    Thanks for the heads up. It’s an old old idea that is very hard to pull off but I really support.I would so like to see the idea of the multi-discipline broadside come back. Back when I was studying the Black Mountain poets, every reading, every event had collaborative pieces of art to both advertise and to take away.Community is the root of everything and the core when most everything works.

    1. JimHirshfield

      I’m seeing musicians do this with concert promotion posters – a different artist and poster for each concert/location…available for purchase at the merchandising counter, limited editions. They didn’t do this when I was attending concerts regularly. Now I’m seeing Ray Lamontagne and Dead & Co do it (I know this because I see their postings on Instagram; yeah, social media marketing to-boot!)

      1. awaldstein

        i love this.Charles Olson, Ed Dorn, Merce Cunningham and the entire creative community at Black Mountain made this a mini-cultural trend.I remember to this day when I was living in Vancouver, new baby just in, no funds and sold off my entire collection of broadsides and folios of poetry from that group.Things we do to pay the rent and feed the kids when young!

        1. JimHirshfield

          Ha! Nice memory

          1. awaldstein

            Prompted me to surf around and found two I once owned. maybe I’ll start recollecting some of these. Olson and Snyder were favorites of mine.

          2. Chimpwithcans

            Top one: “This” = the Eye of Sauron 🙂

      2. Pointsandfigures

        Posters, the new album cover.

        1. JimHirshfield

          Yes. The art of the album cover is gone.

      3. Jess Bachman

        Muscians/bands have been doing this for a long time, probably they never stopped. It’s single-handedly kept a lot of traditional screen printers in business.

        1. JimHirshfield

          It was not a thing when I went to tons of concerts (’77 to ’87). Plenty of t-shirts, but few posters for sale. And definitely not posters specific to that venue with different art and a different artist for each concert.

    2. Dave Pinsen

      It’s been pulled off in many museums for years in the form of gift shops. I got a pair of Sumerian-themed coffee mugs from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s gift shop during its “art of the first cities” exhibition years ago.

      1. awaldstein

        I was in a gallery over the weekend where they had a wall of Haring pieces scrawled on pieces of cardboard that he would hand out to those who appreciated his work while in the subway doing his graffiti work.Made me think of this. Made me think of how important the visual street artist are to this town.

    3. Pointsandfigures

      Ironically, Charles Adler one of the founders of Kickstarter is starting a place in Chicago to do exactly this. Combine multi-disciplinary skills in a way that’s unique and pretty cool.

  2. William Mougayar

    The take-away is a great idea for museums and art visits. I will check it out.

  3. Vendita Auto

    “Living” (no typo) this, guessing Warhol would agree. Thinking the reverse would be a fund raiser.

    1. awaldstein

      I actually think Haring would agree more.

      1. Vendita Auto

        Banned in the UK with Lurchers or do you mean the penis in Manhattan !!

        1. awaldstein

          ?.

          1. Vendita Auto

            Late reply missed the update. Kieth Haring, remember an exhibition think the serpentine that after googling was Manhattan Penis among others present. To young to die. Lurchers are hounds that were used in hare coursing (blood sport) in Ireland /Welsh borders commonly known as haring

          2. awaldstein

            dunno about that but as a native new yorker and collector of pop art, his work is a love of mine.and i never tire of his a few pop shot pieces that have been on my wall for over 20 years now.

  4. jason wright

    The museum – when and where did the idea first appear? I’m ambivalent.

    1. Twain Twain

      Serpentine Gallery in London in 1995 was the inspiration.I like the pill clock but would have it dispensing ‘Love Hearts’ sweets.

      1. jason wright

        My bad sentence construction. I don’t generally like museums much.Olympics is another example of nation state politics.I like stones.

          1. Richard

            Museums, everybody goes to them because they are so empty.

          2. JimHirshfield

            Upvote for inverse YogiBearism

          3. LE

            Also a bit of Groucho Marx…

        2. Girish Mehta

          | I like stones.Elaborate please…stones….museums ?

          1. jason wright

            I jest – the ‘philistine’ inside of me, disliking nation state ideology expressed as ‘culture’, ‘art’, et.c.The whole state promoted industry of culture, arts, sports hacks me off.The UK GOV has its Dept. of Culture, Media, and Sport. In France sport is grouped inside the Dept. of… Health, where it rightfully belongs!. The difference says much about the UK.

          2. Girish Mehta

            Thanks

  5. LE

    The video did a really poor job of convincing me to support this. In particular the picture of a pile of clothes (from the Serependine Gallery in London) and also a stencil etc as examples. The dropping pills are interesting but that level of creativity any child could come up with. [1] Art is a different thing to everyone so I won’t get into what I think art is and what it’s not but this (as presented in the video) doesn’t grab my attention in any way. Perhaps there will be some pleasant take away surprises but given the amount of people that will probably attend it’s hard to see the value in the quantity of ‘art’ that will be offered.[1] Reminds me of bored kids at a bar mitzvah when I was growing up pouring salt and pepper and other junk into glasses.

    1. Richard

      I’m not following the angle here, they want group x to fund an exhibit where presumably group y is walking out with the art or is the idea that same group x is attending and essentially is prefunding the exhibit?

      1. LE

        Yes the video did not convince me that there is any value for group y that will be attending.And so there is the case of a creating a negative by giving something that is perceived as having little or no value, as opposed to not giving anything at all.Let’s say someone invites you to their wedding. You decide to not attend so you send a gift. Is it better that you give no gift or you send them $20? Better no gift at all.

    2. Jess Bachman

      Agree, this video is a total failure of presentation. It’s also misrepresents what they are doing, I think. They claim 400k “artworks” you can take away. But no one is going to take the pill clock out of the ceiling… you will probably get a small plastic bag that you can put 5 pills in that you have to pick up off the floor.Probably saves a bunch on cleaning costs though. Maybe they can get people to wash those clothes aswell.

  6. LE

    The picture of the pile of clothes (disqus doesn’t allow adding pictures on editing):..

  7. Nick Hencher

    Very good idea, the more people that can feel ownership of art the betterNice to see Gilbert & George featured in the video – saw their exhibition at the White Cubehttp://whitecube.com/artist…

    1. Vendita Auto

      Agree think Banksy is the love child of Gilbert or George

  8. jason wright

    Museums = bundled content.Isn’t this the age of unbundling?