Press Release
For Immediate Release
published 5.17.2017
published 5.17.2017
Spartanburg Art Museum
200 East St. John St., Spartanburg, SC 29306
Phone: 864.582.7616
www.spartanburgartmuseum.org
28 giant fiberglass light bulbs decorated by local artists and sponsored by local businesses have made Spartanburg the Southeast's newest destination for public art. A public art app that lets visitors hear the artists speak and guides them to each installation is driving the excitement.
In Jan. of 2017 the Spartanburg Art Museum distributed 28 giant fiberglass light bulbs to 36 local artists, giving them each three months to transform them into works of art. The light bulbs were completed this March and installed in public spaces throughout downtown Spartanburg. On April 18th, the Museum launched a free tour app available on any web-enabled smartphone, tablet or computer that accumulated thousands of page views overnight and continues to grow in popularity.
The app launched at 7pm on April 18th. By 7am the next morning, it had received over 700 page views. At 7pm the following night its page views had more than doubled again, to over 1600. A week after the launch, the app's page views exceeded 10,000. The app continues to grow in popularity and to attract users from inside and outside South Carolina. Museum staff attribute the app's popularity to the wealth of information and ease of use it presents to locals and tourists who are interested in touring the city-wide art installation of 28 light bulbs. The app provides each light bulb's location on an interactive GPS map, along with an audio recording of the artist who created it talking about how they created it and what inspired them.
"We looked around Spartanburg and felt local artists, artists from the Southeast, were conspicuously absent from public spaces. There was plenty of public art, but it had all been done by people from New York, Europe, and so on. We conceived of Lighten Up Spartanburg as a way for our local artist's voices to be heard. And now that they're in the interactive tour app, that's literal as well as figurative." - Mat Duncan, Curator of Collections, Spartanburg Art Museum
Lighten Up Spartanburg! is a large-scale public art program created by Spartanburg Art Museum, on view in downtown Spartanburg from 03.01.2017-03.01.2018. The interactive tour app can be found at artbulbs.oncell.com. Visitors share their photos and thoughts about the project on facebook, twitter, and instagram using the hashtag #artbulbs. See the full list of artists and sponsors in the app or at spartanburgartmuseum.org/lighten-up-spartanburg.
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The Spartanburg Art Museum was founded in 1907 by artists Margaret Law and Josephine Sibley Couper, with the view that "art should not just be the luxury of a few, but the luxury of all." Today, it is one of only a handful of Contemporary Art Museums operating in the Southeastern United States, supporting the creative capacities of the region through an international exhibitions program, youth outreach programs, an art school, a large permanent collection, and an extensive public art program and calendar of community events.
The Spartanburg Art Museum is a regional museum promoting contemporary visual arts by inspiring and engaging people of all ages through exhibitions and education.
Please feel free to contact our Community Development Coordinator and Curator of Collections, Mat Duncan, for more information.
Name: Mat Duncan
Phone: 864.582.7616 ext. 211
Email: mduncan@spartanarts.org
Social Media Handles: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
Pie Chart
Source: artbulbs.oncell.com
62% South Carolina
16% North Carolina
10% Georgia
2% Nevada
2% Florida
1% New York
1% California
6% Other
Bar Graph
Launch - 7:00pm 03.18 (700)
Launch 12 hours - 7:00am 03.19 (1600)
Launch 24 hours - 7:00 pm 03.19 (3100)
Launch 1 week - 7:00pm 03.25 (10,000 )
"I Breathe" by Denise Torrance. Sponsored by Bank of America. From Left: Jeremy Long, Financial Adviser. Stacy Brandon, Upstate Market President, Bank of America. Elizabeth Goddard, Executive Director, Spartanburg Art Museum.