With 326 art installations registered by the third week in June, and with over 50 walk-ins, we had roughly 382 projects placed on the open playa this year, making for another record number of art installations in Black Rock City (up from 360 in 2012).
Burning Man continues to grow in size, and we’ve made the consideration of strategic growth a regular part of our Art Department planning process to ensure we’re able to handle the steady (and sometimes dramatic) increase in art projects each year.
While artists experienced some delays in placement early in the event week – up to three hours in some cases – every person who dealt with the ARTery was handled with friendly professionalism. Our goal is to dramatically decrease this wait by streamlining our processes, including using technology to support our processes, making check-in and follow-ups easy and efficient for the artists so they can get what they need done in the ARTery, and then quickly get back to working on their art – where they’d prefer to be.
Art Tours
The Art Tour program continues to be very popular with participants. This program helps people who find traveling the deep playa physically challenging experience the myriad artistic offerings of Black Rock City.
Interest in the Art Tours has surpassed the number of vehicles and Tour Guides available to conduct the daily tours, so the team is taking a look at both the purpose of the tours and creative ways to satisfy the growing demand for in-depth information about the art on playa. We expect there to be more emphasis put on the self-guided tours, bike tours, and the audio art tour MP3s published prior to the event.