Truth Booth Visits Norfolk June 24-25

NORFOLK, VA (June 13, 2016) — Visitors to the Chrysler Museum of Art will be encouraged to speak their truth when the acclaimedIn Search of the Truth installation pops up on the front lawn June 24-25. It will be the Truth Booth’s only stop in Virginia on a 2016 American tour, and participation is free and open to the public.

Beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday, June 24, the Truth Booth will be positioned on the grounds of the Chrysler near Grace Street and Memorial Drive. The Truth Booth is an inflatable 14-foot-tall speech bubble conceived and operated by Cause Collective, a team of artists, designers and ethnographers creating innovative art in public spaces. The public is invited to enter the booth, where a touch screen will prompt participants to complete the sentence “The truth is…” For up to two minutes, guests will be video recorded as they share their truth. Some videos are later selected to be shared online.

The Museum will celebrate the Truth Booth’s visit by extending its hours until 8:30 p.m. on Friday, June 24, during which guests can also see the new keynote summer exhibition, Herb Ritts: The Rock Portraits. From 6 to 8 p.m., the Chrysler Museum Glass Studio will present a complementary art performance called Bottled Emotion. A public performance project of Glass Studio Manager Charlotte Potter, Bottled Emotion invites the public to exhaust their emotions into an oxygen mask attached to a blowpipe—quite literally bottling their emotions, then disposing them for catharsis. The glass is then recycled for future projects.

The Truth Booth will also be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. June 25, followed by a closing party at Work|Release beginning at 9 p.m. The closing party will feature DJ sets and special performances.

Cause Collective includes Hank Willis Thomas, who visited the Chrysler Museum last year, along with artists Will Sylvester, Ryan Alexiev and Jim Ricks. Their Truth Booth debuted to acclaim at the Galway Arts Festival in 2011 and has made stops in Afghanistan and at Art Basel Miami Beach, among many other locations. The Truth Booth is now embarking on a Kickstarter-funded 50-state tour of the U.S. in time for the presidential election.

“The Truth Booth is a confessional, a soapbox and a therapist,” says Sylvester. “When we’re able to put ourselves out there and see truth from multiple perspectives, I think we find out we have more commonalities than differences in this world.”

The Norfolk stop is made possible by the Rutter Family Art Foundation, with additional support from Leila Graham and Randy Webb, in honor of Meredith and Brother Rutter.

“Hank Willis Thomas and his team continue to create some of the most engaging and dynamic public art projects in America,” says Brother Rutter, partner of the Foundation. “This one in particular invites the community to engage in deep introspection. We feel that communities grow stronger through shared conversation, and what better to share with each other than our own truth!”

Participation in the Truth Booth is free and open to the public, as is all related programming. Admission to the Chrysler Museum of Art is always free. Learn more about the Truth Booth at www.insearchofthetruth.net.

ABOUT THE CHRYSLER MUSEUM OF ART

The Chrysler Museum of Art is one of America’s most distinguished mid-sized art museums, with a nationally recognized collection of more than 30,000 objects, including one of the great glass collections in America. The core of the Chrysler’s collection comes from Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., an avid art collector who donated thousands of objects from his private collection to the Museum. In the years since Chrysler’s death in 1988, the Museum has dramatically enhanced its collection and extended its ties with the Norfolk community. The Museum, expanded in 2014 to add additional gallery spaces and amenities for visitors, now has growing collections in many areas. The Chrysler also mounts an ambitious schedule of visiting exhibitions and educational programs and events each season.

In 2011, the Chrysler opened a full-service glass Studio adjacent to the Museum. In addition, the Chrysler Museum of Art administers two historic houses in downtown Norfolk: the Moses Myers House and the Willoughby-Baylor House.

The Chrysler Museum of Art, One Memorial Place, Norfolk, and its Perry Glass Studio, at 745 Duke St., are open to the public Tuesday through Sunday. The Historic Houses on East Freemason Street are open weekends. General admission is free at all venues.

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