The average person looks at an artwork for about 15 seconds. On Slow Art Day museums, gallery’s and other venues try to change that by offering the opportunity to enjoy art slowly. Groeten van Marc organized a group art show with art by Christiaan van Tol, Ank Daamen, Martijn den Ouden en Rini Brakkee. To inspire slow watching we held four group talks, where we discussed one artwork for 45 minutes.

Does 45 minutes seem like a long time? Not if you consider all the decisions that were made by the artist, all the references that might be spotted, and all the personal associations that can happen in the brain of the viewer. Questions that were posed by the moderator helped to guide the mind to discover new aspects of the artworks: “how is space represented in this work?” “what emotion might the artist have felt when working on it?” “what kind of colors did the artist use, and why?”

All in all participants were very enthusiastic, so we plan to organize Slow Art Sessions more often.

works by Ank Daamen