Blog
LONDONIST
Guerilla Curating: The Street Museum Of Art In London
December 29th, 2012 | By Lindsey
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… (Read more)
Check out the video below to see them at work.
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VANDALOG
SMoA brings guerilla curating to the streets of London
December 29th, 2012 | By Caroline Caldwell
The Street Museum of Art has launched its second venture in “guerilla curating” in London’s artsy district of Shoreditch. Like their first exhibition, it’s basically a self-guided street art tour with museum-like wall labels. The exhibition’s title, “Beyond Banksy: Not another gift shop“, is likely a tongue and cheek reference to the commercial attention that street art has received in London these past few years, with Banksy at the forefront of the movement… (Read More)
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ARTINFO
Forget Banksy: the Street Museum of Art turns the Spotlight on London’s Other Talents
December 18, 2012 | by Coline Milliard
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… (Read More)
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The L Magazine
“Going Guerilla With the Founder of Williamsburg’s Street Museum of Art”
November 13, 2012 | by Jessica McKenzie
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… (Read More)
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Fast Company’s Co.EXIST
“Street Museum Of Art Re-Envisions Brooklyn As One Giant Public Exhibition”
November 2012 | by Patrick James
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… (Read More)
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We Heart
“THE STREET MUSEUM OF ART: WHO NEEDS A GALLERY WHEN YOU HAVE A WHOLE CITY?”
October 23, 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… (Read More)
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Bowery Boogie
“Street Museum of Art Doles Stickers on the Bowery”
October 18, 2012 | By Elie
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… (Read More)
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PSFK
“Visit a Museum without Leaving the Street”
October 12, 2012 | By Allie Walker
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… (Read More)
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COOL HUNTINGS
“The New Venue Spreads Out Across Brooklyn”
October 10, 2012 | By Joan Erakit
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… (Read More)
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VANDALOG
“The Street Museum of Art’s guerrilla curating in NYC”
September 11, 2012 | By RJ Rushmore
The Street Museum of Art (SMoA) has announced the debut of it’s first exhibit In Plain Sight. What that means is that some street art fan or fans have put up the outdoor equivalent to gallery wall labels in order to help identify, draw attention to and explain a few selected pieces of street art. ForIn Plain Sight, the curator(s) have included work by Sweet Toof, Faile, Gaia, JR and others.
This could really easily come across as ridiculous and cheesy, but I think the SMoA have pulled off one of the best actions demonstrating both the necessity and impossibility of displaying street art in a museum setting… (Read More)