Just Like Taco Trucks, Art Takes to the Road

 

On a recent Saturday, Elise Graham and her 23-year-old son, Aaron, pulled a 12-foot van into a parking spot on West 14th Street in Greenwich Village, swung open the back doors, lowered the aluminum stairs, and welcomed visitors inside their mobile Rodi Gallery.

 

Around the United States, art is on the roll. Inspired by the success of food trucks, gallery owners like the Grahams, who are based in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., have been taking their show on the road. For the last year, they have traveled to populated spots like the meatpacking district of Manhattan, the Peekskill train station and Astoria Park in Queens. This Saturday, they are parking in the center of Bushwick Open Studios, a three-day festival in Brooklyn.

 

Rodi exhibits the work of emerging artists, like the vibrant still lifes of Torey Thornton, 23, who paints on slatted wood panels. On West 14th Street, the van drew pedestrians heading home from brunch, tourists on their way to the High Line, and art lovers who knew of the gallery and used Facebook to find its location. Ted Alexandro, 45, a comedian from Astoria, admired “the DIY spirit” when he happened on the roving gallery beneath the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. “Seeing art displayed inside a truck that felt like a gallery brought a big smile to my face,” he said.

 

In interviews, mobile owners say they are trying to avoid the confines — and politics — of the gallery system; to help people think about art in different ways; or to reach more communities, especially those with young and old people who tend not to visit art districts. That was what motivated Berge Zobian of Providence, R.I., to create his truck in 2012, equipped with 44 linear feet of exhibition space, a stereo system, security cameras, projection monitors and even a bar for making coffee. On one occasion he took 40 paintings to a church, one priced at $35,000.

 

“I’ve heard it all along,” said Mr. Zobian, who has also owned brick-and-mortar institutions for the past 14 years. “People say, ‘I wish you had a gallery in my town,’ as if you can just get up and build a new gallery.”

 

While statistics on mobile galleries are hard to come by, social media shows the trend catching on in Los Angeles; Seattle; Santa Fe, N.M.; Tampa Bay, Fla.; Chicago; and even Alberta, where a ’60s teardrop-red trailer presents works from a changing lineup of local artists. Pinterest boards show a range of designs on pages dedicated to mobile galleries, and Twitter is full of people advertising their whereabouts with hashtags such as #keeptrucking. Ann Fensterstock, a lecturer on contemporary art and the author of “Art on the Block,” a history of New York art galleries, said these galleries are “part of the zeitgeist of this moment in art creating.” Critics, however, point out that artists may not be taken seriously without gallery backing. This is hardly the first time American artists have gone mobile. Before opening a gallery in the East Village, Gracie Mansion staged her “Limo Show” in 1981 in a rented limousine, parked in SoHo, where she invited passers-by into the back seat for Champagne while she pitched her friends’ art.

 

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