Jackson Free Press

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

—Henry David Thoreau

The Slow Movement is running rampant, though it likes to run at the speed of a tortoise.

The movement began in the 1980s with the introduction of the Slow Food movement, which was started by Carlo Petrini in protest to a McDonald's opening near the Spanish Steps in Rome. The movement as a whole strives to slow life down and allow people to enjoy the small things.

Art followed food's footsteps in 2008 when Phil Terry, founder of the Reading Odyssey and CEO of Creative Good, decided to ignore most of what was in a museum in lieu of paying special attention to a few key pieces. "He wanted to know what would happen if museum and gallery visitors changed the way they looked at art. Instead of breezing past hundreds of artworks in the standard eight seconds, he wondered what would happen if people looked slowly at just a few," the website states.

He enjoyed it so much, he did a slow art test-run with four people at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 2009. They stood in the museum for hours staring at a few artworks. A year later, 16 museums and galleries in North America participated in Slow Art Day. This year more than 250 art venues across the globe are participating in the day, held April 27 this year.

The concept is simple: Participators sign up with their local hosts--the Mississippi Museum of Art is participating--and visit on April 27, look slowly at five pre-designated pieces of art for 10 minutes each, and then go to lunch and discuss them with the group.

The Slow Art Day organization's mission is to "help more people discover for themselves the joy of looking at and loving art."

To learn more, visit slowartday.com or sign up to visit the Mississippi Museum of Art (380 S. Lamar St., 601-960-1515, msmuseum.org) from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on April 25 to participate.