Even paintings need to get out town for the summer. If you are driving through Dallas during the month of August, you might notice a few luminaries stopping by for a visit. Willem de Kooning is splitting time between Oak Cliff and the Cedars; Edward Hicks found a Peaceable Kingdom in Grand Prairie. Both Jasper Johns and Winslow Homer holed up in Arlington (sports fans?). It's all part of Art Everywhere, which launched Monday, replacing billboards, movie theaters advertisements, and wrapping buses in American paintings.
It's not just Dallas, either. With roughly 50,000 displays spread throughout the 50 states, pieces from the DMA collection visit Manhattan streets (like John Singer Sergeant's Dorothy (above)) and paintings from Los Angeles stretch across New Mexico billboards. This collaboration between Outdoor Advertising Association of America and five major of the country's major museums is a concerted effort to put American art in front of American eyes outside of the museum. The 58 works - chosen through a public vote earlier this summer - were selected from the DMA, the Art Institute of Chicago; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the National Gallery of Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
"Thanks to OAAA and its members, a vast new audience is now starting to encounter masterpieces of American art, free of charge, as part of their everyday landscape," says Maxwell L. Anderson, the Eugene McDermott Director, Dallas Museum of Art. "In many ways, American art tells the story of our country. On behalf of the Dallas Museum of Art and the four other participating museums, it's wonderful to be able to bring that story out into the public square."
Nine of the piece from the DMA's permanent collection are spread throughout the country. So if you're road tripping this month, keep your eyes open and take along this handy map.
