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Years ago in Aspen, I created a program called Art in Unexpected Places. We put artists’ work on lift tickets and brought art onto the mountain, inserting it into places where people weren’t necessarily expecting to encounter it.
I still love that idea.
Walking through Chicago recently, I came across one of Gabriel Orozco’s photographs installed on a bus shelter. It is part of Public Nature, a Public Art Fund project that places twelve of his photographs throughout the city. Orozco made the images while walking through public spaces, noticing moments when nature and the built environment collide, accommodate each other, or simply coexist. I encountered his work in much the same way: walking down the street, paying attention.
A few days later in Boston, I found photographs by Gregory Crewdson along the Aritzia storefront windows inside the Prudential Center. We had gone there for food, not art, which made encountering them even better.
I like what happens when art interrupts the ordinary. You don’t arrive prepared to have an art experience. You are going somewhere else. And suddenly something asks you to look.
Museums and galleries teach us to pay attention by announcing that there is something worth seeing. Art in public space asks something different of us. We have to notice it ourselves.
Once you begin looking this way, a city changes. The walk between two destinations becomes part of the itinerary.
What art have you encountered somewhere you weren’t expecting to find it? Send me a picture. I’d love to see what you noticed.
