Trucks transport 70 percent of the freight in the United States, according to the Department of Transportation. And if a prominent New York artist and his friends have their way, a tiny fraction of that total -- six 18-wheelers full, to be exact -- will soon be a variety of cargo not usually found barreling down the interstate: art, fresh from painters' studios; poets', playwrights' and songwriters' pens; and filmmakers' cameras.
After years of rumors about a Great American Art Trip in the works, the painter Eric Fischl has announced a privately financed program in which a truck-based roving museum and performance space will tour the country for two years to address what he sees as an identity crisis in American culture.
The idea, he said in an interview, grew out of a strong conviction in the years after 9/11 that the country, as it grew more politically polarized, was losing a sense of its place and direction in the world, more so than at any time since the 1960s.
"This came just from talking to friends, peers, acquaintances, students, local grocers, whoever I talked to," he said. "America doesn't usually turn to its artists for help with something like that, but I actually think it's something that artists do very well. And I thought, 'If America won't turn to its artists, then I know a lot of pretty famous artists and I'll ask them to go out and do it themselves.'"
The project, called "America: Now and Here," will begin with a nonvehicular preview before the specially outfitted trucks are built, setting up first in Kansas City, Mo., in a temporary exhibition space that will open on May 6. The show will move on to similar spaces in Detroit in July and Chicago in October.
Then in fall 2012, the plan is for six trailer trucks to hit the road, stopping in towns and smaller cities that have yet to be selected, where the convoy will set up like a miniature state fair, swapping the Tilt-a-Whirls and show pigs for paintings and photographs by artists like Ed Ruscha, Susan Rothenberg, Gregory Crewdson, Laurie Simmons and David Salle; short, conversational plays by writers like Edward Albee and Marsha Norman; and music by artists like Lou Reed, Philip Glass and Roseanne Cash. Four of the truck trailers will partially unfold and link together to create a 3,300-square-foot gallery space, and two more will contain materials for a covered pavilion and a screen and seating area to show short films by documentary makers like Lauren Greenfield and Mitch McCabe.
