Release Date: April 7, 2014

Public Voting Begins Today for the Largest Outdoor Art Show Ever Conceived—A Free Nationwide Celebration of American Masterworks

National Gallery of Art Collaborates with Four Major Museums and the Outdoor Advertising Association of America to Launch Art Everywhere US

Washington, DC, April 7, 2014 —American artists have long found inspiration in iconic locations such as Times Square, Sunset Boulevard, and Route 66. Starting on August 4, 2014, and continuing for four weeks, these places and more will be transformed into free open-air galleries for masterworks of American art through Art Everywhere US, the largest outdoor art show ever conceived.

The National Gallery of Art, Washington, is collaborating with four other major museums and the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) to present a nationwide celebration of America’s artistic legacy. The museums include the Art Institute of Chicago, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the National Gallery of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Approximately 50 recognized masterworks of American art from the museums’ collections will pop up on as many as 50,000 displays nationwide, including static and digital billboards, subway platforms and trains, buses and bus shelters—and the selection will be curated with the help of the American people through an online vote. Beginning April 7 at www.ArtEverywhereUS.org and continuing for a month, everyone is invited to view 100 American artworks nominated by the museums and vote for the ones he or she would most like to see reproduced outdoors. The final list of some 50 Art Everywhere US works will be announced to the public on June 20.

Speaking for the consortium of five museums, Maxwell L. Anderson, the Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, stated, “The works you’ll see in Art Everywhere US tell the story of America, express our creativity and reflect who we are—and this is our chance to make them a part of the American landscape, and everybody’s life. We hope Art Everywhere US will inspire all of us to learn more about America’s artistic treasures, past and present, and discover many more of the great works in our nation’s museums.”

“We are thrilled to be a part of Art Everywhere US and share some of America’s iconic masterpieces,” said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art, Washington. “Created in 1937 as Andrew W. Mellon’s gift to the nation, the Gallery’s collection has grown to include some 130,000 works that trace the development of European and American art from the Renaissance to the present.”

Nancy Fletcher, president and CEO of the OAAA, stated, “Art Everywhere US is the latest chapter, and perhaps the most spectacular, in our members’ long history of contributing their resources to public service. At OAAA, we are always mindful of our responsibility toward the spaces we share as citizens. We are thrilled that five extraordinary museums are now enabling us to make this unprecedented contribution to the public sphere by bringing America’s artistic heritage directly to the people.”

Artworks nominated by the five museums range in date from 1767 to 2008 and include paintings, photographs, works on paper, decorative objects and multimedia works. Examples include John Singleton Copley’s Sarah Sherburne Langdon (1767, Dallas Museum of Art), Gilbert Stuart’s George Washington (c. 1821, National Gallery of Art), Grant Wood’s American Gothic (1930, Art Institute of Chicago), Edward Hopper’s Early Sunday Morning (1930, Whitney Museum of American Art), and John Baldessari’s Wrong (1966-68, LACMA).

Among the other artists represented among the 100 nominated works are Romare Bearden, George Bellows, Mary Cassatt, Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, Imogen Cunningham, Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, Thomas Eakins, Philip Guston, Marsden Hartley, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Jasper Johns, Jacob Lawrence, Roy Lichtenstein, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Georgia O’Keeffe, Catherine Opie, Rembrandt Peale, Jackson Pollock, James Rosenquist, Mark Rothko, Ed Ruscha, John Singer Sargent, Cindy Sherman, Clyfford Still, Andy Warhol, James McNeill Whistler, and Frank Lloyd Wright. The full list of nominated works is accessible at www.ArtEverywhereUS.org.

Art Everywhere US will also be live on a full range of social media channels starting April 7. Twitter users can share their impressions with the hashtag #ArtEverywhereUs. On Facebook, members of the public will be encouraged to share their votes and later will be able to post their own collages of works on view. Instagram will highlight artists, museums and viewing opportunities and will enable people to share the photos taken at multiple sites on “art crawls.” On Pinterest, nominated and selected works will be pinned on a dedicated board, and after August 4 photos of the displays will be pinned and organized by both artist and location.

There will even be an interactive feature for mobile devices. Once the displays are up in August, users of the Blippar application can access augmented reality features through their smart phones, including more background information about the artworks shown in selected displays and recordings that will help bring the images to life.

Art Everywhere US follows a similar initiative conducted in the UK in 2013 through a collaboration among the Art Fund, Tate, Richard Reed, and the UK out of home advertising industry.