Complex

By Andrew Lasane | 30th October 2014

In collaboration with New York City’s Street Museum of Art (SMoA), artists ELLE, Rubin, and Skewville will create a series of billboards for the "GOOD Cities Project," an initiative by the Ford Motor Company and filmmaker Bristol Baughan in which "thought leaders" create homages to cities around the country.

The New York City billboards will feature photographs of the street artists' work with the words "Love Letter to New York" on each of them. SMoA writes that "there is perhaps no stronger example of how we are all created by and creators of the cities we love than through the relationship between New York City and its history of street art." For them, having the trio of street artists create these love letters was the best way to introduce others to the city.

To read more about the project, which will premiere as an installation in November, check out the video above and head to GOOD Magazine's "GOOD Cities Project" page.

Click here to view article on Complex.

GOOD Magazine

By Erin Joyce | 27th October 2014

Street art and graffiti are intrinsic to the visual landscape of many locales in the United States, but New York has a particularly colorful relationship with this more guerilla form of creative expression. Driving, walking, or biking through the streets of Bushwick, the Bronx, Manhattan, or any borough of New York, for that matter, allows you a view of a stunningly vast array of murals, wheat paste posters, tags, and stencils—an array which includes anything from a thought-provoking, social commentary piece from the famously elusive Banksy to a seemingly artless, expressive outburst of a phrase hastily scrawled on a wall. And the diverse range of street art peppering New York’s landscape is indicative of many characteristics of the city—an incredibly diverse population, the breakneck speed of city life, the tumultuous emotional rollercoaster of trying to make it, or simply survive. 
 
In recent decades, street art has increasingly gained credibility both in the art world and broader culture, making the leap out of streets and alleyways to infiltrate galleries and museum spaces. Harnessing this interest and uptick in popularity, the Street Museum of Art, an anonymous public art group based in NYC, meshed the worlds of the museum and of the street in an unconventional way. Instead of removing the art from its natural environment and transporting it into a stereotypically sterile gallery or museum environment, SMoA installed descriptive text panels alongside the art in its urban environment, in its original context, in a guerilla curatorial move. SMoA has also curated exhibitions of street art with a unique ‘traveling exhibition’ museum model, taking their operation on the road to collaborate with local artists in cities from London to Montreal to Melbourne, where they currently reside.

For the GOOD Cities Project, SMoA has set out to create a three-part billboard series by three New York City-based artists: Elle, Skewville, and Rubin. The Street Museum of Art interprets and synthesizes its experiences with New York by incorporating photographs of street art found around the city by three local artists they’ve worked with over the years, and superimposing a brief written love letter in spray paint across the top—a unique, collaborative approach to their personal histories. Elle, a Brooklyn-based artist, who originally hails from California, has been practicing street art for over five years now. Her practice as a street artist is prolific and her methods are varied, as her work manifests itself in a myriad of mediums utilizing stickers, extinguishers, wheat paste, rollers, acrylics, and more to create fascinating street art installations that illustrate her personal New York experience. Elle has climbed the Brooklyn Queens Expressway to paint billboards and projected a 200-foot video installation upon the façade of the New Museum, for two particular New York-centric works. 

Since childhood, Rubin, a native of Gothenburg, Sweden, had dreamt of inhabiting what he envisioned as “the graffiti capital of the world,” often taking imaginary walks through the streets of New York, marveling at the street art he one day hoped to see in person. When he was finally able to call New York home, Rubin relished the experience of roaming the streets firsthand. With a background in graphic design, Rubin’s work bridges the worlds of abstraction and geometrically-oriented work with that of the more typographical hallmarks of graffiti, resulting in an aesthetic that is a unique blend of his adoptive Brooklyn home and his native Scandinavia.

And, finally, Skewville is arguably the most quintessential New York of the artists. Born and raised in Queens, Skewville’s work is primarily comprised of unconventional self-portraits done in large format urban murals on walls and buildings, cutouts hung from light posts, and even pasted pieces to the sides of city buses. These likenesses self-incorporate the visual characteristics of New York in a way that is deeply personal and referential to Skewville’s life experiences.

Altogether, these three artists with their different backgrounds are representative of the colorful microcosm that is New York. Though their practices may be fundamentally diverse, they each hold a special reciprocal relationship with their city, as their works live throughout the streets they are informed by. Collectively, they hope that they may help the public visually rediscover the city they hold so dear. 

Stay tuned to the GOOD Cities Project this November where the Street Museum of Art’s visual love letters to New York will be exhibited, featuring images of actual street work by Elle, Rubin, and Skewville. And, if you find yourself in New York come November, keep an eye out to see their works displayed on local billboards. 

For more, watch the video below made by Elle, Skewville, Rubin, and their friends at SMoA, who were so inspired by the GOOD Cities Project and, ultimately, this place that they call home. New York City has given them so much—it's the creative backdrop from which and on which they draw, and subsequently want to share with the world. Witness their love for New York firsthand through this compelling behind-the-scenes video that shares their individual experiences with this city that has shaped them, both as people as and artists. 

Click here to view article on GOOD Magazine. 

Fluoro Digital

Street Museum of Art X Google Street Art

Street Museum of Art (SMoA) has announced two new exhibitions in collaboration with the Google Street Art project.

SMoA and Google’s Street Art Project have come together to highlight the duality between the ephemeral life of street art within the urban environment and its virtual existence made possible through the Internet and social media platforms. Street artists around the world are collectively changing the way we experience art.

The two new exhibitions are titled Dans la Rue: Montréal and 24hrs in NYC. Despite taking place on different parts of the globe, the projects come together to highlight the way that previously undocumented street art is given new life when brought to the web. See below for more details.

Dans la Rue

Teaming up with Station16 Gallery, Dans la Rue is a public exhibition of the illegal steet art found around Montréal’s Plateau. Including the work of 12 local artists — the exhibition celebrates the fleeting, subversive and DIY nature of the street art. Each piece has been placed on the street, for the public, without permission. Artists featured within the exhibition include Bfour, Gawd Labrona, Listen Bird, Omen, Produkt, Rage5, Scaner, Stikki Peaches, Waxhead, WIA (aka whatisadam) and Wzrds Gng. 

24hrs in NYC

In partnership with 16 New York-based street artists, 24hrs in NYC challenges the notion of a “public” art museum by collectively working outside conventional exhibition spaces. Presented with only a deadline and one rule to keep the details of the exhibition a secret until the launch date, the artists acted as their own curators — taking the concept of the museum and letting it run wild in the streets. Artists partaking in 24 hours in NYC include CB23, Cernesto, Clint Mario, Edapt, EKG, El Sol25, Enzo & Nio, FoxxFace, Jilly Ballistic, Mori, QRST Rubin, Shin Shin, Sines, Wing and Wizard Skull.

fluoro spoke with SMoA following their second exhibition Breaking out of the Box,which took place in 2013. Read the full interview and find out more about how their curating style adopts the same guerrilla approach as street art.

Click here to view article on Fluoro Digital.

PSFK

By Jason Brick | 30 October 2014

Street art at its best creates murals and images that stir your emotions each time you pass it. At its worst, it’s just another patch of graffiti marring a building or a subway wall. New York City’s Street Museum of Art (SMoA) is collaborating with three local artists to bring out and feature the best of street art.

-Elle is a California native whose street art includes stickers, roller and spray paint, fire extinguishers, wheat paste and projected video.

-Rubin hails from Sweden originally, working to blend traditional graffiti with abstract geometric designs.

-New York native Skewville’s most famous work was a series of skewed self-portraits hung on walls, light posts and buses. His recent sneakers project captured a street trend and turned it into art.

All three artists have worked with SMoA for years, and won the hotly contested berths in the project due to the scope and skill of their work. The GOOD Cities project, in conjunction with Ford Motor Company, will create a series of three billboards. Each will feature photographs of an artist’s body of work, taken in their native street habitat, then superimpose a brief written “Love Letter to New York” over the images. The hope is that by presenting the quintessentially New York urban art experience through three very divergent lenses, that the project will illustrate how vibrant, diverse and colorful New York is.

The project premieres in November as an installation featuring images by all three artists and the love letters they have created. Once the installation closes, the billboards go live throughout New York City and other cities from more artists are forthcoming.

The GOOD Cities Project is a partnership between the artists, SMoA and  Ford, which has funded the initiative as a way of exploring the relationship between a city and the people inhabiting it. It is slated to run for five months.

Click here to view article on PSFK.

Fluoro Digital

The Street Museum of Art (SMoA) is the first public art initiative, which adopts the same guerrilla approach as street artists, interrogating the street in a series of curated exhibitions. fluoro spoke with SMoA about the concept of a ‘museum’ and the unique experience a viewer receives from absorbing art outside of a gallery.

SMoA creates exhibitions by making use of the street art already found around major cities. Generating didactic labels and maps, SMoA aids individuals to interact with the art in their city. Visitors are invited to add to the exhibition by making use of the blank self-adhesive labels (that are available to order on the SMoA website).

SMoA’s guerrilla approach sees them work anonymously, adopting the same tactics as street artists to paste labels that curate the works around the feature city. So far SMoA haven’t had any confrontation with the authorities, but they were keen not to jinx themselves and SMoA maintained their anonymity when fluoro spoke with them.

SMoA challenges the traditional definition of a ‘museum’ through their annual exhibitions, which so far have covered areas of New York and London. Their most recent exhibition ‘Breaking out of the Box’ can be viewed across walls of buildings throughout Chelsea, New York.

(f) Moving out of the ‘white cube’, how do you intend the viewer’s experience to change when you bring the museum to the streets?

(SMoA) The experience is entirely different. There are certain expectations when you plan to visit a museum. Everything is carefully orchestrated — the artificial lighting, climate controlled temperature, meticulous hanging methods, even an intended traffic flow for visitors. The entire experience is carefully planned and thought out for us before we even arrive.

Street artists are doing things differently and the Street Museum of Art is just following their lead.

(f) By placing didactic labels next to the pieces, do you intend visitors to use the language of ‘the gallery’ or ‘the street’ when viewing the works?

(SMoA) When we first came up with the idea for SMoA, we were interested in exploring all that a ‘museum’ symbolizes, [we asked ourselves] – what are the fundamental purposes of art museums?

If you look through any number of mission statements you will find three common goals: to collect, exhibit and preserve. For street art — a movement that is intentionally ephemeral, public and resists containment — this is impossible. But beyond the tangible aspects of these institutions, the ‘museum’ as a cultural hub engages with its community, encourages an exchange of ideas, and promotes an awareness, curiosity and excitement for art.

It doesn’t matter what language our visitors use — what is important is that a conversation is started.

(f) In terms of the ‘Breaking out of the Box’, how do you account for the ephemeral nature of street art in the structure of the exhibition?

(SMoA) That is both the beauty and demise of our exhibitions. It is always exciting to stumble across a work of street art, knowing that it can be there for years or gone tomorrow. This experience can never exist within a traditional gallery or museum. You just have to get out and find the work while it’s there!

—

SMoA mentioned that they have plans to take their ‘museums’ to other cities around the world that are known for their street art. Melbourne, Australia was suggested as one of the cities they have grand ideas for.

Click here to view article on Fluoro Digital.

Refinery29

Yes, you read that right. This is not the museum of street art. There will be no promenading through clean, static, white-walled spaces. No security guards reminding you to stand at least a foot away from every painting lest you trip an alarm and are trapped in a steel cage that drops from a secret hatch in the ceiling. This is the Street Museum of Art., the public art project that calls for viewers to walk the streets of New York City in order to see each site-specific piece of work — taking in the smells, sounds, and "extra" sights.
Now in its second year, the Street Museum of Art — or SMoA, if you're into acronyms — is an unauthorized program of public art exhibitions that boasts free admission and limitless hours. This year's program, entitled Breaking Out of the Box features works by EKG, Futura & Os Gêmeos, gilf!, Icy & Sot, Jordan Betten, José Parlá & JR, KATSU, Kenny Scharf, Kobra, Phlegm and Stikman. In an attempt to promote thought and reflection about the difference between traditional exhibition methods and the contemporary street-art movement, SMoA’s current show focuses on the power of placement and its significance in defining the genre. Informative labels are available to provide some historical context. But more important than reading the signage is taking in the entire art experience as a whole. The time of day, uncontrollable traffic noises, NYC smells, and fellow audience members are only a few factors that will surely color each artistic encounter differently. Sounds to us like more than enough cause to visit — and visit again.
 

Click here to view article on Refinery29.

WeHeart

It’s not very often you see street art on the street anymore – most artists seem to be beating a path to the nearest gallery and going all legit on us. Nothing wrong with that, but what we liked so much about the Street Museum of Art (SMoA) when we featured it last year is that the art stays exactly where it was created, with the avenues and alleyways of New York acting as the world’s biggest gallery.

Breaking Out of the Box is SMoA’s new exhibition collection found around the streets of Chelsea, making reference to throwing off of the shackles of traditional gallery spaces and their influence on the way artwork in them is viewed, as criticised by Brian O’Doherty in the mid-1970s essay Inside the White Cube. José Parlá, JR, Futura and Kenny Scharf are just some of the big names whose work is being pointed out; as usual there’s an information plaque mounted somewhere near each piece telling you what’s going on, and more details of the artists involved and a map of where to find the works is available here.

Click here to view article on WeHeart.

Londonist

The Street Museum of Art (SMoA) is a public art project that started in New York City, challenging people's perceptions of street art. They adopt the guerilla tactics of street artists and curate exhibitions of found art, labelling them as if they were in a formal gallery.

In December SMoA hit the streets of Shoreditch and "curated" an exhibition, Beyond Banksy adding "This is Art" labels to found work by C215, Christiaan Nagel, Eine, Mobstr, Pablo Delgado, Phlegm, Roa, Run, Skewville, Space Invader, Stik, and Swoon. Check out the video below to see them at work.

But SMoA goes further than that. Blank, self-adhesive labels are available to the public on their website — ready to be filled out with a personal description and posted around the city on art works of your choice. Add your label, take a photo of the exhibit and submit to SMoA's website. All photos submitted of found works of art with their labels will then be added to SMoA’s collection, documenting the progress of this project. Join them!

Click here to view article on the Londonist.

Artinfo

Major institutions showcasing street art on authorized walls miss a key aspect of the discipline: the guerrilla approach to art making. Butterflies pinned in a pristine display case don’t look as good as in the open air. Taking stock of the stencil crew’s recent entry to the mainstream, the Street Museum of Art presents street art in its natural environment.

The self-proclaimed “guerrilla curators” select and provide extensive labels for pieces within the urban fabric, devising a street art tour whose duration, they say, is “entirely reliant on external forces and the reaction of the public.”

After a first outing in Brooklyn, the SMoA has now turned its attention to the British capital. Their newly-launched “Beyond Banksy: Not Another Gift Shop” in Shoreditch gathers works by C215, Christiaan Nagel, Eine, Mobstr, Pablo Delgado, Phlegm, Roa, Run, Skewville, Space Invader, Stik and Swoon. Varied, yet compact and easy to navigate, SMoA’s exhibition carves a new route through an area increasingly taken over by mass tourism and corporate entertainment. It’s also yet another demonstration that the tongue-in-cheek art of Britain’s most elusive street artist is only the tip of the iceberg.

Click here to view article on Artinfo.

L Magazine

Yet another museum has arrived in Brooklyn, only this one claims to be unlike all those that came before. The Street Museum of Art (SMoA) is completely free, open at all hours and publicly curated (one might say crowdsourced). If you live or work in Williamsburg you might already have stumbled across some of the exhibition, which launched 6 weeks ago, although parts of it have already been dismantled and replaced because the streets don’t have security guards. SMoA’s online description has the intriguing words “guerrilla” and “illegally” in the online description, so of course we had to find out more.

The Founder and Director agreed to an interview but only via email in order to safeguard his or her anonymity.

Could you tell me a bit about the origins of this project? Where did the inspiration come from and how did you get the whole thing started?
The idea came together a year ago, after Jeffrey Deitch’s Art in the Streets exhibition opened at MOCA. The museum received record attendance numbers for an exhibition of artists whose work can already be seen around their cities on any given day, and for free! The exhibition was great in that it put many of these artists on the map for the museum-goers who may have never really known about street art but this was not an exhibition of “Art in the Streets.” Instead of modifying or replicating this inherently public art medium, we decided to re-evaluate the current model for contemporary art museums by adopting the guerrilla tactics and radical energy of the street artists. The answer seemed simple — we would bring the museum to the streets.

So you’re operating anonymously, but could you describe the group or some of the people behind SMoA?
It is important for us to operate anonymously for many reasons but mainly because our individual identities are not what is important. The Street Museum of Art is a project that is entirely reliant on the reaction and participation of the public — SMoA can be anyone, or everyone.

How long has the exhibit been up and what has public response been like?
In Plain Sight was launched 6 weeks ago, however, much of the work had been put up by the artists long before we came along. Within 24 hours Gaia’s Cat Eating Mouse piece on Kent Avenue had been buffed out by another artist. Jaye Moon’s mosaic piece constructed from LEGO blocks was ripped down a few weeks later and taken by someone from the corner of North 7th and Bedford. That is just the nature of street art — it is ephemeral and is in a constantly changing dialogue with the city.

I saw that the public can request art labels and participate in curating this exhibit; has anyone taken advantage of that yet?
People have been submitting photos of the work they find all around the city! Aside from our program of curated exhibitions, the Street Museum of Art is providing the public with blank, self-adhesive labels on the website — ready to be filled out with their own personal descriptions. Photos of the labels that simply read “This is Art” c. 2012 will be added to the museums online collection. It is our way of encouraging the public to get out there and start looking at and rediscovering their city through a new lens.

Labels were also mailed to the directors of every major art museum in the city, critics, historians and the city’s public art organizations. However, it seems the ‘artworld’ insiders are going to be the hardest ones to convince that this is an art form worth supporting!

How has the project proceeded as expected, and how has it surprised you?
It is always surprising to watch a person’s reaction when they walk past one of SMoA’s labels unexpectedly. Crowds of people can walk by in a day without anyone even noticing a work of street art on the wall. Then as soon as one person finally stops to read the description, take a picture or simply look at what is in front of them, it triggers others to do the same. We hope that The Street Museum of Art will similarly spark a change in the way the public view their city and cause others to start exploring and questioning what they see around them. This is only the beginning for the Street Museum of Art though and we are excited to see how things continue to progress!

On your website, you describe the museum as a program of “illegally curated exhibitions”. How illegal is illegal. Are you expected any kind of backlash or dismantling of the exhibition?
Well for starters, mapping out our exhibition with the placement of Plexiglas didactic labels around the city does not exactly sit well with the police. Many of the artists talk about a fight to reclaim public space when discussing their street work and this is because there are many laws preventing the public from total freedom of creative expression in these spaces. SMoA is adopting the guerrilla tactics of a street artist in as aspects of our operations.

Click here to view article on L Magazine.

IDOL Magazine

Reinventing the idea of art exhibition, The Street Museum of Art represents public art movementin its most original context. Bringing the institution of a museum out to the streets, there is a new generation of urban artist emerging who let art gallery qualities and guerilla strategies fuse in front of our eyes. We speak to the Museum to explore the transformation of art performance where cities are stage.

How the idea of the Street Museum was born?

The Street Museum of Art was founded back in Brooklyn, 2012. We started seeing more and more “street art” gallery exhibitions and Jeffrey Deitch’s Art in the Streets hit the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA. A differentiation was not between made between street art, graffiti and gallery work by the institutions that our public looks to for information on the foundation of such movements. We took the museum to the streets — creating a hybrid based on the intangible qualities of a museum and guerrilla tactics of street art and graffiti culture.

Who are the artists that are part of the Museum, are you work as form of a collective?

The process varies from exhibition to exhibition. In the beginning, The Street Museum of Art curated exhibitions of art we found around the streets of NYC and London. The focus was not only on the fundamental qualities that we felt were not being represented accurately by traditional art institutions currently housing street art exhibitions, but also about the life this work takes on after the artists leave them behind. In our more recent exhibitions and projects, we’ve focused on building new collaborations with organizations that have helped develop their local street art and graffiti communities and the local artists that have engrained themselves into the urban fabric of their home cities.

Are contemporary cities scenes for art?

Large cities have always attracted artists. Nowadays, we are seeing the Internet change this a bit. An artist no longer needs to physically be in the big city in order for their work to be seen — but they will always be a mecca for the arts.

Do you think projects such as Banksy’s Better Out Than In in New York last year push urban art into public consciousness?

Projects like Banksy’s residency in New York last year definitely help popularize the movement but focusing on the work of one artist limits our understanding of the larger scope and history of street art and graffiti. Don’t get us wrong, we love what he does and definitely saw an overlap in many ways between Better Out Than In and The Street Museum of Art. Both projects appropriate museum-like rhetoric in a tongue and cheek approach to stress 1) the impossibility of such work ever being exhibited accurately within the walls of traditional art institutions, and 2) the necessity for an understanding that the cultural and art historical influence of this work is not less than what would be found in a major museum simply because the artists are creating their work on the street.

Do you think the contemporary museum has become too institutionalized that bringing art outdoors can let people experience art on a new level?

The current museum model that is used today was developed to reflect the work of its time. Look back to Alfred Barr’s exhibition style for MoMA in the early 20th century. Several modern art movements were developing across Europe and required chronological and geographical order to accurately capture this progression through exhibition. Before that, art was exhibited in a salon style. It is not that contemporary art museums have become too institutionalized, but today certain contemporary art movements such as street art, graffiti and muralism require an alternative exhibition model. Instead of trying to remove these works from their original context, it is The Street Museum of Art’s mission to bring these conversations to the street and appreciate that the art is intended to be experienced on an entirely new level. We are breaking down the concept down to its essentials — what are the primary functions of a museum beyond the physical institution? What intangible qualities can be appropriated for an alternative exhibition style?

The latest project you took part in, THE GOOD Cities, aimed to create visual love letters to US cities. What did you want to express in your love declaration for New York?

For us, NYC is made up of and consumed by the creative minds who help shape it. These artists not only visually contribute to the urban landscape, they are at the pulse of the energy that makes this city so unique. The billboards we designed simply read “NYC is” with the tag of 3 local artists that The Street Museum of Art has worked with in the past — each coming from very different backgrounds to call NYC home. They highlight one work by each artist that can be found around the city on any given day, reinforcing their connection with New York. It’s our hope that the public will take an active role in the project by going out to rediscover all the art that can be found around their city as they search for each piece.

With your ’24 hours in NYC’ exhibition, your activity extended over Williamsburg, SoHo, Chelsea and other parts of the city. Duration and the appearance of the artworks was also unknown. I feel like one of the greatest things about urban art is its’ ‘pop-up’, unexpected quality.

Absolutely. It’s all about the hunt and surprise! An unexpected encounter with a new piece by your favorite graffiti or street artist is always best. It’s often like running into an old friend. There is a duality between street art’s virtual reality and the ephemeral life this work endures on the street. This essence of surprise is often lost when we rely on the internet for viewing street art.

One may think that murals have become a ‘signature’ form when it comes to urban art. Are there other mediums you try to pursue?

It’s important to differentiate between muralism, street art and graffiti. While the three may share similar techniques and are all found throughout public environments, the driving motivation and energy behind each medium is very different. Our quick run-down of all three: Graffiti is the illegal tagging of one’s pseudonym with a heavy focus on repetition, placement and vandalism. Street Art is the placement of art illegally on the street. One artist may explore various mediums and motifs while appropriating the DIY and vandal nature of graffiti culture. Contemporary muralism has continued to rise in the last decade as street art gains in social popularity and artists are gaining access legal walls.

New York has an extremely rich street art history. Does it feeds into city’s contemporary urban art?

Origins of street art as we know it today can be traced back to the earlier graffiti movement in NYC. Writers tagged subway cars as a way to get their work out there — going “all city.” They thrived on the adrenaline of seeing their work pass by, knowing that it would be experienced by anyone in the path of that particular subway line. Now the internet has completely changed this. Post-internet artists no longer need to risk everything to get the spots with most exposure or put up the same amount of work in order to be noticed — not saying that all artists on the street today have given up on this level of hustle. However, New York City’s history of graffiti and street art can still be found as a major influence in the work being produced today. This is where it all started.

Johannes Cladders has expressed an idea that this is an artist who creates a work, but a society that turns it into an artwork. Do you think these are the audiences that decide about the value of street art?

Value is a tricky word. A great work of street art can hold immense value based on its context, relationship to the city, level of reaction, etc. However, it is an ephemeral work of art placed on the street against city laws for the public to enjoy and left to decay. Street art is not intended to have monetary value. The Street Museum of Art is interested in encouraging the public to first take notice in these works and become an audience. Let them decide whether they find personal value in the work knowing that it will be an intangible one.

How do you see the future of street art?

This is an interesting question that we were discussing recently with one of our local artist. There seems to be a divide in the street art we are currently seeing around NYC. Many artists are turning to contemporary muralism as the risks for vandalism add up and their identities become known through successful gallery careers. On the other hand, there is an influx of new artists who seem to be driven by the same motivations as the earlier graffiti movement. Their focus lies on repetition and certain quantity vs quality ideals — working primarily in stencil and poster-like wheat pastes. As KATSU would say, it’s all about the “fame tokens.” This may not necessarily reflect where the future of street art is headed but as the movement matures, our hope is that street art will continue to push its limits both creatively and legally.

What are your upcoming projects?

SMoA is coming to Europe for 2015!

Click here to view article on IDOL Magazine.

Fast Co.

PATRICK JAMES 11.08.12 10:00 AM

The funny thing about street art is how rare it is to see a pedestrian stumble upon a Roa or a Swoon on an urban wall, and, having noticed it, proceed to stop, fold his arms across his chest, and settle in for a good, long viewing. All those ticks—the chin scratches and deep breaths, the things that indicate you’re having an experience with an artwork—are mostly confined to museum and gallery settings. Maybe that’s a good thing, but these days the city IS a gallery, an ever-changing aesthetic backdrop for the comings and goings of our lives.

That’s part of the idea behind the Street Museum of Art, a collaborative exhibition of art on the fences, sidewalks, and alleyways of the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. The current exhibition is titled In Plain Sight, for which the anonymous organizers have identified, located, and mapped art by the following artists: C215, Elle, Faile, Gaia, Imminent Disaster, Jaye Moon, JR, Nick Walker, Paul Richard, R.Robot, and Sweet Toof.

How long will the current show last? The organizers coyly note that the duration is "entirely reliant on external forces and the reaction of the public" (so Sandy may have taken much of the signage, if not the art, down a little early). And when asked for the inspiration behind the exhibition, via email, SMoA cited Jeffrey Deitch’s Art in the Streets show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles:

"The name of the show alone seemed ironic as the exhibition tried to contain the energy of an inherently public art medium within the confines of its galleries. Work by these artists can be found everyday through out the urban environment, and for free! However, few people would consider stoping to really look at street art as they would with any painting in a major museum. Instead of trying to modify or replicate the work within a gallery space, SMoA is re-examining the current model for 'public’ art museums—essentially bringing the museum to the street."

One central idea of SMoA is that it’s the first "public" art museum, meaning that not only can anyone in the city freely observe the art, but also, anyone can participate in creating it. Blank museum labels are freely available on the website, and people can submit photos of new works as they appear.

Of course there can’t really be a permanent collection, as nothing is permanent—or, for that matter, owned, when it comes to street art. But that’s the beauty of the project, which recognizes the ephemeral, evolving nature of the city, and celebrates beauty where you find it.

Click here to view the article on Fast Co.Exist.

WeHeart

Rob Wilkes | 23 October, 2012

The thing with street art is often context is everything; remove the artwork from its environment and the work is itself diminished. So then, the obvious (but actually very clever) solution is to leave it where it is, and rather than bring the art together to be viewed in one blah building, send the viewers on a city-wide scavenger hunt to discover it for themselves.

That’s the idea at the heart of Street Museum of Art (SMoA) – leading art lovers on a walking tour of the city, pointing out artworks that may normally be lost or ignored as people buzz about with their frantic daily lives. Signs have been placed giving information about the work, some telling the viewer where to look for the more discreet pieces. Art and exercise at the same time? It should be Government-funded (but obviously isn’t, this being America).

So far, so great, but here’s where the project gets really interactive. SMoA also provide blank labels on their website that fans can print out, fill in and stick up to highlight work that they discover, to share with other users. Interactive, inclusive and with the potential to unearth an absolute treasure trove of obscurely-placed or previously ignored artwork, constantly expanding, and encouraging city inhabitants to look at their environment through fresh eyes, always on the lookout for new work to champion.

SMoA are currently running an inaugural exhibition, In Plain Sight, introducing street art fans to this new concept in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and bringing to attention works by C215, Elle, Faile, Gaia, Imminent Disaster, Jaye Moon, JR, Nick Walker, Paul Richard, R.Robot and Sweet Toof among others. Admission is free, opening times are right now until whenever, and no jacket required. What are you waiting for? Hit the streets.

Click here to view article on WeHeart.

Bowery Boogie

The nondescript black magazine box at the corner of Bowery and Prince is not delivering dailies for consumption. Nor is it a depository for trash (yet). Rather, it’s dispensing stickers for the Street Museum of Art, an unauthorized public project that challenges current methods of exhibiting street art. As their mission states, “the city streets have become gallery walls for this urban museum” with free admission and limitless hours.

Downtowners are urged to fill out the labels with personal descriptions and paste near graffiti. Everything is an exhibit. It’s essentially an experiment in crowdsourcing that will likely result in some funny vandalism of its own. Meanwhile, its current installation, “In Plain Sight,” is on view until the graffiti police pull the shit down.

The Street Museum of Art seems to raise the question – should it stay on the street instead of the gallery circuit? What do you think?

Click here to view the article on Bowery Boogie.

Design Taxi

A new museum has opened up in Brooklyn that challenges the typical museum setting by turning it on its head. 

Instead of the usual gallery space to display artworks, the museum has taken to the streets—using the city’s space as gallery walls. 

Called the ‘Street Museum of Art’ (SMoA), it claims to be the first public art project to adopt the illegal guerrilla tactics employed by street artists. 

The ‘urban museum’ is currently holding its first exhibition called ‘In Plain Sight’ in Williamsburg, where it challenges ‘jaded’ New Yorkers to look out for public art that surrounds them. 

“The exhibition encourages visitors to rediscover this city through a street artist’s perspective—paying attention to the freshly wet cement of a sidewalk, the rooftop of a run-down industrial building or the flat exterior surface of a familiar storefront,” according to a statement on SMoA’s website. 

“In Plain Sight is an illegal guide to Williamsburg, Brooklyn through the lens of a street artist—offering a new way to view the city and acting as a catalyst for future public street art exhibitions.” 

Because it’s located on the streets, the museum is open 24/7 and admission is always free! 

The exhibition will be on display throughout the fall, and you can find a map of all the artworks here. 

Click here to view article on Design Taxi.

PSFK

ALLIE WALKER | 12 OCTOBER 2012

Think you aren’t a ‘museum’ person? This new museum in Brooklyn, New York turns the notion of a pristine gallery setting on its head. Instead of using blank white walls to display works of art, the streets become the canvas in the Street Museum of Art. The new museum embraces street graffiti and other public art, turning the works into a living, ever-rotating collection.

Instead of pricey admission fees and long lines like at other New York museums, the Street Museum of Art is free and open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The first exhibit, In Plain Sight, is now on view in Williamsburg, challenging jaded New Yorkers to look for the art that surrounds them, but often goes unnoticed, on city streets:

Each piece has been cleverly positioned by the artists­ – hidden in plain sight and taunting those who pass by to stop and look. The exhibition encourages visitors to rediscover this city through a street artist’s perspective – paying attention to the freshly wet cement of a sidewalk, the rooftop of a run down industrial building or the flat exterior surface of a familiar storefront. For a moment, through the scavenger-hunt-like exhibition experience unique to The Street Museum of Art, one can begin to imagine the artists on their search for the ideal urban canvas.

The works are ‘cataloged’ as if placed in a more traditional setting; white placards accompany the piece, noting the artist and giving a short explanation of the work. Rather than transplant the works, the Street Museum of Art has chosen to keep the vibrant street art in its urban, natural environment, encouraging the public to view ‘Williamsburg, Brooklyn through the lens of a street artist…and acting as a catalyst for future public street art exhibitions.’ 

Click here to view article on PSFK.

Cool Hunting

With its inaugural public arts project, "In Plain Sight," the The Street Museum of Art (SMoA) is challenging the notion of sequestering street art to a museum by bringing the museum out to the streets. Featuring work from artists like Sweet Toot,Paul Richard, and Elle, the streets of Williamsburg are currently lined with a variety of accessible pieces. To make things a bit more interesting, the museum is calling on New Yorkers to participate in the project by collecting self-adhesive labels (available on SMoA's website) and share a personal description about one of the found artworks. Photographs documenting the growth of the exhibit will be added to the museum's permanent collection.

Click here to view the article on Cool Hunting.