At Some Museums, the Art Is Now on the Outside

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Pictures of a 5-year-old girl from suburban Seattle, dressed up as her heroines — Angela Davis, Rosa Parks and other African-American women who fought for freedom — were shown at the International Center of Photography recently. On Thursday night, they were followed by images of displaced migrants in a Tunisian refugee camp.

Where the museum chooses to display these powerful shows — on the facade of its Bowery building, from dusk to dawn — is a sign of a growing global trend among arts institutions that are trying to make an artistic statement while engaging visitors, both returning and new.

Jurien Huggins, a 24-year-old graphic designer and photographer who was walking by, praised the museum for bringing “its knowledge out into the world and making something like this more accessible.” Joshua Sandoval Garcia, a 22-year-old abstract artist who strolled by, was struck by the young girl’s face and took his own photos, which he said he would use as a reference “when I have an artist’s block.”

The museum’s executive director, Mark Lubell, said the museum began projecting its rotating series of images beginning in March. “It’s consistent with our mission,” he said, “to conduct a dialogue with the world we live in today.”

To commemorate this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, on Monday, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, in Lower Manhattan, has commissioned a series of black-and-white photographic portraits of some 30 Holocaust survivors, called “Eyewitness,” that it is displaying in the ground-, second- and third-floor windows on the facade of its building on Battery Place.

The trend dates back centuries: to 18th-century “son et lumière” shows and fireworks spectacles with wall-like sets in Europe, according to Erkki Huhtamo, a professor in the department of design media arts at the University of California, Los Angeles. These were followed in the 19th century by outdoor projections done with a magic-lantern slide projector. Today’s technology includes projection mapping techniques that can display images and animations on a surface that is not flat or white.

Even before the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington, opened, it projected a seven-minute video on its facade, depicting milestones in black history to celebrate completion of its exterior construction.

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