Art appreciation in low gear at Laguna Art Museum

To a viewer who lingers on it for a few seconds, Donna Schuster’s “O’er Waiting Harp Strings” seems simple enough. The 1921 oil painting shows a young woman plucking a harp while seated alone before a backdrop of violet and gold.

But it may look anything but simple to visitors of the Laguna Art Museum on Saturday when Hedy Buzan leads them in regarding the image.

For example, there’s the painting’s use of symmetrical lines. The two sides of the harp’s wooden frame and the musician’s torso create a vertical triad. There are the subtle motifs of triangles and curves. There are the sharp, visible brush strokes, which Buzan likens to the motion of playing a harp itself.

“This is what slow looking is about,” she said by phone Thursday after dissecting the painting with a reporter’s help. “Everyone’s going to have a different interpretation.”

Buzan, a Laguna Beach artist, will host the museum’s annual Slow Art Day event, in which viewers linger over paintings — and linger, and then linger some more. The museum is one of about 200 expected to take part this year in the tradition, which New York entrepreneur Phil Terry originated in 2010.

Terry, the founder and CEO of the social networking firm Collaborative Gain, first experimented with slow art viewing in 2008 at the Jewish Museum in New York. On a whim, he parked himself in front of Hans Hofmann’s “Fantasia” and didn’t move for an hour.

“I don’t know why that came to me,” Terry said. “I work in the Internet world, and things are so fast. I think it was something of a response to that and looking for a different way to experience art. And it was so powerful that I thought, ‘I’ve got to tell my friends.’”

The following year, Terry rounded up a small group and tried slow viewing at the Museum of Modern Art; the response encouraged him to keep going. In 2010, he officially declared Slow Art Day, and, according to the event’s website, 55 venues took part worldwide.

Terry, a Southern California native who often attended the Sawdust Art Festival growing up, met Buzan there during a return trip several years ago. When he told her about Slow Art Day, she participated in one of his events and then began hosting her own.

At 11 a.m. Saturday, Buzan will meet with whoever shows up at the Laguna Art Museum and begin with Schuster’s painting. She’ll have a recommended list of works for the group to view afterward, although patrons can decide which ones to study.

On Buzan’s proposed itinerary are John Paul Jones’ “Double Portrait,” William Brice’s “Untitled,” Manuel Neri’s “Prietas Series V” and Helen Lundeberg’s “Untitled.” Afterward, Buzan will lead a discussion of printmaking, and the group will reconvene at a nearby cafe and share observations about what they saw.

According to Edward Fosmire, the museum’s deputy director for communications, Slow Art Day usually brings in a crowd of 20 or more. Part of the project’s intent, Terry said, is to coax insights out of people who didn’t know they had them.

“Everyone who’s participated in Slow Art Day aren’t experts themselves, but they have so much to say,” he said. “It surprises them, actually. They say, ‘Oh I don’t know much about art.’ But if you put someone before a painting for a long period of time, they’ll have a lot to say.”

If You Go

What: Slow Art Day

Where: Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach

When: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday

Cost: Free with museum admission ($5 to $7)

Information: (949) 494-8971 or lagunaartmuseum.org