Galleries by Guide
What would an art tour be without the friendly guides?
by Matthew Lawrence

So, let's say you like art. But let's say you're one of those folks who can never make it to galleries. Or maybe, just maybe, you're someone who just likes free wine and cheese. Free wine and cheese!

Okay, now that I've got your attention, let's talk about Gallery Night, the one night a month that about two dozen galleries stay open late. There are free trolleys that loop around the city to take you from show to show. And, of course, there's an array of refreshments at most of them.

Gallery Night's been around for a decade now, but this year things have beefed up a little with celebrity tour guides and some new participating galleries. I've been catching Gallery Night events for a few years now, but this time I thought I'd check it out from the tour guide's point of view.

In case you don't know, the galleries are broken up along four routes, all of which leave from Citizens' Plaza downtown, and each bus has a guide who knows what's going on at each stop. Judy was my guide.

Judy was perky. Very, very perky. She's relatively new to Providence, having only moved here last winter. She just got into the RISD Furniture MFA program and has been volunteering at Gallery Night. She doesn't know the streets that well, but she knows art and she's disarmingly bubbly. Very, very bubbly.

Ours actually a handicapped school bus, so there was a lot of room but not actually many seats. Connie, our bus driver, hadn't been downtown in 20 years so she was very excited about all the construction and demolition. The shows were good. I thought the most exciting thing was the CucumberLab stuff at RISDWorks -- they make a totally amazing dual record player-wine cabinet that I'm totally coveting right now.

There were just a couple of hitches. The awful traffic, for one. The fact that they were filming Underdog around the Turks Head building, blocking off the street. Oh, and there was that little incident of a mercury spill in the Sol Koffler building, shutting down that gallery right when all the RISD MFAs were having their thesis shows.

Everyone we had picked up wanted to go to 17 Peck, the first stop, so for the rest of the route we were alone. The second round was a little bit better - we got some Catholic school teachers who wanted to see their students' work at the URI Feinstein Gallery, which gave me a chance to wax reminiscent about my elementary school days at St. Rocco's in Johnston and St. Mary's in Cranston.

Then, somehow, it was already seven o'clock. Since we'd gotten such a late start, I decided to stay on the downtown bus for one more loop. Judy was replaced by James. James and Judy are what you might call opposites.

Don't get me wrong, James isn't unfriendly, but he's definitely not bubbly. But on the bright side, he brought note cards. This loop was a fast one; 17 Peck was definitely the one gallery everybody wanted to go to, and the traffic had died down by then.

Rather than making the East Side loop right away, I decided to walk up to see the Kara Walker/Hive Archive show at the Providence Art Club. Real guides can't do this, of course, but whatever. That was one of the most crowded openings I've been to in awhile, and this wasn't your typical Gallery Night crowd, or even your typical Providence Art Club crowd. I felt kind of like they had imported a crowd of young, photogenic people with pretty clothes and expensive haircuts from New York for this show. It was a little surreal.

I was kind of crashing by this point, but I caught the bus outside the Art Club and made a few loops. The East Side stops are a little quirkier - the Watercolor Society and the John Brown House, say -- but the Art Club and RISD Museum were both mobbed. Sadly, none of the mob got on the bus the first time. My new guide was Michael, who is 18 and very soft-spoken and has the squarest sideburns I have ever seen. I naturally decided to have a crush on him for the rest of the bus ride, which was very quick, thanks to Maria, the spunky bus driver.

Gallery Night was wrapping up now, and I ducked off a little early to check out the RISD shows in the Peerless Building, grab some dinner, and pass out.

Additional Info Gallery Night happens every third Thursday each month. Visit GalleryNight.info