"Arg goes 'Inside|Out' in CLT," by Helen Schwab, The Charlotte Observer
Take art so notable it’s in a museum. Get it in front of people who aren’t.
That’s the idea of “Inside|Out Charlotte,” launched last week across Charlotte.
Reproductions of works from the Gantt Center and the Bechtler Museum, framed to withstand the elements, will pop up in places like parks and gardens, along greenways, and at neighborhood gathering sites from watering holes to libraries to YMCAs.
The Bechtler and Gantt plan activities, too, connected with the art: community talks, bike/walking tours, live music, an InstaMeet and the like.
The goal, according to the Knight Foundation’s Victoria Rogers?
“There’s something very powerful about seeing works of art in person. You become completely immersed. Inside|Out brings that experience to people, directly in their communities. And an amazing thing happens: entire neighborhoods, entire communities, start to talk about art.”
The idea bloomed in Detroit in 2010. Now a national initiative supported by the Knight Foundation, it’s expanded to Philadelphia, Akron and Miami.
More than 50 works should go up around Charlotte this spring, with another group set for fall.
Thursday afternoon, Michael Workman and Ronnie Grissom installed the first piece to go in along Stewart Creek Greenway: contemporary (and Gantt-exhibited) artist Brenna Youngblood’s “Sunny Side Up.”
Nine more works are slated to go along that greenway and Irwin Creek’s, in the north and west of Charlotte, including another by Youngblood and two by Alberto Giacometti, a key mid-century modern artist whose work is prominent at the Bechtler. Also going in there: pieces by contemporary artist and photographer , both of whom have current exhibitions at the Gantt.