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Art on the Move

Artrain, the mobile museum authority, is taking it to the streets. After nearly four decades of touring world class art and cultural programs onboard its train museum across America, Artrain unveiled its new semi-trailer based design. The change was initiated in order to reach more cities and better serve art lovers while continuing to fulfill its mission of enriching lives and building communities through the arts. Artrain hits the open road in 2010, traversing the country with state-of-the-art semi-trailers known as Mobile Museum Units (MMU). Click here to watch semi-trailers transform into an art museum.

America: Now+Here, a planned exhibition of art, music, theater and poetry under the direction of Eric Fischl, will be the first to be fitted for the MMU’s. The 21-month tour, whose multi-media shape is filling out, is meant to involve a wide variety of artists and audiences in a creative conversation about fundamental priorities and issues of 21st century American experience. Among the 150 artists involved in the project are sculptor Bruce Nauman, who is representing the U.S. in the 2009 Venice Biennale, photographer Catherine Opie and painter Mark Bradford; playwrights Edward Albee and Jon Robin Baitz; musicians Rosanne Cash and Melissa Etheridge; and poets Suheir Hammad, Luis Rodriguez and California poet laureate Carol Muske-Dukes.

Switch is leading the design of the expandable semi-trailers that replicate museum facility standards for environment and security. Each MMU provides approximately 1,000 square feet of gallery space and can be connected to one another to fashion an exhibition facility unique to each Artrain traveling show.

Check out Artrain’s new website and find out how you or your community can participate at www.artrainusa.org.