First Friday Art Tour Explains wHY: Green Building is Becoming to Art

TYLER, TX (December 1, 2009)—Wondering what all the “green” hype is about? Visitors to the Tyler Museum of Art may find the answer in a seemingly unlikely venue during the next First Friday Art Tour slated for this Friday, December 4, from 11 a.m. to noon. This Friday’s tour will focus on aspects of two TMA exhibitions titled 4 Salvaged Boxes: Sustainable Creative Design and Light Footprints: New Museum Site Photography by Robert Langham, which are both installed inside the Bell Gallery. First Friday Art Tours are offered free of charge by the Tyler Museum of Art.

4 Salvaged Boxes: Sustainable Creative Design and Light Footprints: New Museum Site Photography by Robert Langham are joined together to take a local look at an international endeavor. 4 Salvaged Boxes aims to demonstrate the sustainable design features of the Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) which was designed by wHY Architecture, the firm hired by the TMA for its new building project. The GRAM was the first new art museum in the world to receive the Gold LEED certification when it opened in 2007 and has received international accolades for its innovative “green” design.

While 4 Salvaged Boxes demonstrates the “how” of green architecture and design, Light Footprints showcases the compelling argument behind the green movement. Light Footprints: New Museum Site Photography by Robert Langham documents and transforms into art form the nature found at the future site of the Tyler Museum of Art. Through this collection of images taken over the course of two years in spring, summer, fall and winter, Langham has created visually arresting images of the almost undisturbed East Texas landscape currently on the property. When the new museum is built, it is these images that will greet museum visitors from inside and outside the building. The evergreens and the deciduous trees, the blooming flowers and brushes as well as the meandering creek and ferns that grows on its banks are all examples of what wHY Architecture and the Tyler Museum of Art aim to preserve by utilizing the sustainable design techniques demonstrated by the exhibition.

4 Salvaged Boxes also demonstrates how architectural elements can transform natural resources into usable energy. First Friday Art Tour participants will learn firsthand how materials that otherwise go unused or become garbage can be used in place of other resources. They will also view images of the nearly untouched property that will one day be preserved in large part by these “green” techniques.