500 Clown is shaking things up for visitors to the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art this fall with the debut of its first museum project. With The Art of Experience: The Smart Museum, 500 Clown is playing with conventions of what is supposed to happen at an art museum (much like the Chicago-based company did with classic theater) and inviting audiences to move from passive observers to active participants.

The Art of Experience is devised by 500 Clown’s Adrian Danzig and Rebecca Stevens, the Smart’s 2014–15 Interpreters in Residence. The annual residency provides a forum for Chicago-based artists with an interest in social engagement to create unique art experiences with Smart Museum guests.

To mark the launch of the project, 500 Clown will host an At the Threshold social hour on Thursday, October 2 from 5–7:30 pm, featuring The Art of Experience, live performances, drinks and music from The Punch Trunk, and creative conversations.

500 Clown and The Art of Experience As the Smart’s 2014–15 Interpreters in Residence, 500 Clown created The Art of Experience: The Smart Museum as a way to encourage visitors to engage with the art around them using their own personal expertise. With The Art of Experience, visitors are asked to draw cards from a custom-designed deck within GalleryX. Each card is an invitation—“Write a letter to the artist whose piece of art annoys or angers you,” “Convince yourself that you love something in the room,” “Which work of art has one of your perfections?”—that encourages visitors to think differently about museums, works of art, and artists: provoking laugher, conversation, wonder, and other experiences.

The project is inspired by the philosophy of John Dewey—a onetime professor at the University of Chicago and author of the influential book Art as Experience (1934)—and by Howard Gardner’s seminal research and theory of multiple intelligences. It encourages visitors to directly engage with and interpret the art around them using their own expertise, whether kinesthetic, social, logical, linguistic, or spiritual.

500 Clown seeks to shift audiences from passive observers to active participants through humor, games, play, deep listening, and invitations to fun. After 15 years of theater-making in Chicago, the company has started to bring 500 Clown-style experiences to other realms. Working with cultural institutions and other partners, 500 Clown creates custom-built experiences and workshops for diverse groups. Adrian Danzig is 500 Clown’s cofounder and currently its Creative Director and Rebecca Stevens is the company’s Design and Strategy Lead.

GalleryX The Art of Experience is just one of the innovative programs centered in GalleryX, a temporary space at the heart of the Smart that will serve as a hub for creative discussions and experiences throughout the Museum’s 40th anniversary season in 2014–15.

“With 500 Clown’s residency project and the related GalleryX initiative, we’re inviting visitors to experience the Smart and our collection of art in new ways,” said Michael Christiano, Smart Museum Director of Education and Interpretation. “It’s all a big experiment. We’re using the 40th anniversary as a moment to open ourselves up to new perspectives and new ways of thinking about art that will then inform our future approach to museum education and visitor engagement.”

Designed by the Chicago-based Range Design, GalleryX is a flexible, open space built in the center of the Smart Museum that will be home to ever-changing displays of art, UChicago courses, public discussions, programs, and interactive experiences during the Museum’s 40th anniversary, September 27, 2014–June 14, 2015. From the outside, the space is defined by a screen wall featuring a series of “fins” that offer shifting views of the interior. Inside, the space provides an alternative classroom-like setting with flexible seating for up to 25, display space for objects from the Smart’s collection, a flat screen display, and a “response wall” where visitors can share their thoughts and experiences with the Museum and with each other.

Range Design (formerly Kujawa Architecture) is a Chicago-based architecture and design firm focusing on the intersection of art, architecture, design, and landscape. Past projects include a collaboration with Theaster Gates for his 2010 Whitney Biennial installation; Chicago-area restaurants Longman & Eagle and the Promontory; and Chicago art gallery Kavi Gupta’s Elizabeth Street space.

In addition to housing The Art of Experience and other public programs, GalleryX will be offered as a free community space available to groups and individuals during public hours. Student organizations, book clubs, professors, co-workers, community partners, music groups, and others can reserve GalleryX as a space to meet, create, and collaborate. Visit smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/exhibitions/galleryx for information on availability.

Public Forums: How to Make a Smart Museum The open, experimental spirit of GalleryX extends beyond the physical space within the Smart to inform a series of public programs called How to Make a Smart Museum. The series speculates on the future of museums and addresses questions of audience engagement and access, technology, institutional sustainability, cultural representation and authorship, creative place making, and responsible stewardship.

Five public forums invite creative thinkers to explore these big issues. Visitors to the Smart Museum are also invited to participate in this dialogue through an installation alongside GalleryX. The programs and responses will together help the Smart define what it means to be an academic art museum in the twenty-first century.

• The Museum Proposition | October 23, 2014, 6 pm Chicago Innovation Exchange Skydeck, 5235 South Harper Court, Room 1121 What is the one thing that must sit at the heart of an engaged museum? Panelists include: René De Guzman (Oakland Museum of California), Carroll Joynes, (Cultural Policy Center, The University of Chicago), Lisa Junkin (Jane Addams Hull-House Museum), and Elizabeth Merritt (Center for the Future of Museums, American Alliance of Museums), among others.

• Arts, Agency, and Creativity | December 6, 2014, 10 am Arts Incubator, 301 E Garfield Blvd How can art inspire students and other learners to critically and creatively engage with the world? Panelists to be announced soon.

• The Act of Participating | March 5, 2015 What does it mean to be an “active” participant in a museum-based experience? Panelists to be announced in the winter.

• The Technology Question | April 23, 2015 What role, if any, does technology play in creating authentic experiences with original works of art? Panelists to be announced in the winter.

• 2054, A Smart Odyssey | May 28, 2015 What did we learn? What do we believe? Where do we go? Facilitators to be announced in the winter.

Support The GalleryX initiative and its related programming have been made possible with support from the University of Chicago Arts Council, Ariel Investments, the Illinois Humanities Council, and the Franke Institute for the Humanities.

About the Smart Museum of Art The Smart Museum of Art is an intimate museum for bold encounters with art. Both fueling and expressing the creative energy of the University of Chicago, the Smart opens the world to boundary-breaking art and ideas through innovative special exhibitions, ever-changing programs, and distinctive collections.

Hours The Smart Museum is open Tuesday–Sunday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., and Thursday evenings until 8 p.m. Galleries are closed Mondays and holidays. The Smart is open to all and admission is always free.

Mission The Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago opens the world through art and ideas.

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