Six 18-wheeler trucks will soon be crossing the United States, transporting not goods, but art, fresh from studios, pens and cameras.
The program, a roving museum and performance space conceived by the painter Eric Fischl, will tour for two years, to address what he sees as an identity crisis in American culture.
The idea, he said , grew out of a conviction in the years after 9/11 that the United States, as it grew more politically polarized, was losing a sense of its place and direction in the world .
“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.”
The project, called “America: Now and Here,” began in Kansas City, Missouri, in a temporary, stationary exhibit on May 6. The show will move on to similar spaces in Detroit in July and Chicago in October.
Then in fall 2012, six trailer trucks will hit the road, stopping in towns and smaller cities, with 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 306-square-meter gallery space, and two more will contain materials for a screen and covered seating area to show short films by documentary makers like Lauren Greenfield and Mitch McCabe.
The project also recruited 54 well-known poets, who collaborated on “Crossing State Lines,” a book of linked verse in the tradition of the Japanese renga.
Mr. Fischl and his collaborators stress that their tour is not about trying to discredit anyone else’s idea of art, or to instruct people about the merits of big-city contemporary culture. “The conversation we’re hoping to start is not about art but through art,” said Dorothy Dunn, the program’s director and a former official at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. In each city and region the show visits, she said, it will collaborate with local artists and institutions, and the hope is that it will be able to raise enough money to continue beyond its initial two-year run, with new groups of artists.
Mr. Fischl said the project was raising money from some of the participating artists as well as from foundations and corporations. Though a few artists he approached declined to take part - “There were artists who were scared, I think, that it sounded nationalistic” - most, he said, seemed eager to have a chance to reach audiences outside museums and galleries and commercial theaters.
“The art world has become incredibly insular,” he said. “There’s such a disconnect between what artists are trying to do and how what they make ultimately gets used.” He says he rejected the idea of conducting his tour by train.
“When these trucks come to town and unfold, people are going to be totally curious about what’s inside them, in the same way they are when the circus or Nascar comes to town,” he added. “Americans love trucks.”
Ms. Norman, the playwright, said the program could give people ways to think about America other than those offered by the media and pop culture.
But she added that giving artists free rein to create whatever they wanted was always tricky, especially in areas of the country much more conservative than New York or Los Angeles.
“You ask playwrights for a response and of course you’re going to get three works that are going to have naked people in them,” she said. “One of our jokes is that we’re going to set up the ‘Nude Tent,’ and whoever wants to come in and see those plays can.”
By RANDY KENNEDY
