The Arkansas Art Center's Artmobile is a dinosaur-size example of an idea that goes back to horse-drawn medicine shows and circus trains.
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Traveling shows entered the automotive age full speed, and many sorts of entertainments and educational services come on wheels.
Public library bookmobiles, for example, date to the 1800s, but really took off when America's love for the automobile came to full bloom after World War II.
Today, the Internet does much the same job of bringing books to people outside the library. But the American Library Association still celebrates National Bookmobile Day (it was April 13), and the Seattle Public Library has come up with a green alternative: Books on Bikes. Library staff members pedal customized bicycle trailers to various events.
The Nashville Public Library steers yet another kind of show-on-the-go: The Puppet Truck, delivering book-related puppet shows, including Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County."
The nation's first artmobile rolled out of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 1954 -- outward bound from Richmond with a half-million dollars worth of Dutch and Flemish paintings, according to history.com. Visitors paid a quarter to peek inside.
In 40 years of travels, the Virginia museum's art wagon inspired similar operations in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles -- and Little Rock.
The Natural State version had to be "adapted to meet the conditions of winding Arkansas roads," Arkansas Arts Center senior education specialist Jessica Wright says.
Artmobiles were a common extension of art museums in those years. But the new shine gradually flaked off the notion, and big trucks are expensive to run.
The University of Wyoming Art Museum in Laramie, and the New Bedford Art Museum in Massachusetts still have artmobiles, but the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens has a different idea.
The Georgia museum's Adopt-a-Bus program asks for donations to bring children to the museum by the busload.
-- Ron Wolfe
Style on 05/10/2016