Five leading US art galleries selected works of art that represent American history and culture. The public voted for their favourites, and the final selection of 58 works are appearing across the country on billboards, bus shelters, subway posters, buildings and other public places.
The exhibition is inspired by Art Everywhere founder, Richard Reed who first produced Art Everywhere UK. Both shows are running until the end of August to make this into the biggest art exhibition ever.
Reed describes the inspiration behind the show”
“I used to walk across Shepherd’s Bush Green and on a poster site someone had put up a beautiful picture. There was no logo; it wasn’t an advert. It was really mysterious, but it was a beautiful thing to see and I would stop and look at it for 30 seconds on my way into work. It just gave you a bit of lift.
I was telling my wife about this and she said, imagine what it’d be like if there were things like that everywhere. What would it be like if all the posters across the country for two weeks showed art not advertising? So we went to the big poster companies and said this is our idea – to turn the UK into the world’s largest outdoor gallery for two weeks.
And they loved it and decided they wanted to work together as an industry to make it possible: we’ve called it Art Everywhere.”
