Chartered train trips tend to conjure images of flag bunting, stump speeches and glad-handing politicians.
But a cross-country whistle-stop tour now being planned as a kind of rolling public art project by the artist Doug Aitken might give train travel considerably more cultural cachet.
Mr. Aitken, who works in Los Angeles and whose pieces in video and film often explore speed and people in transit, has organized a three-week journey from New York to San Francisco, with 10 stops in between, called “Station to Station: a Nomadic Happening,†which will include not only shows by visual artists but also music, poetry and food.
The train will travel from New York to Pittsburgh on Sept. 8 and then make stops in Minneapolis and St. Paul; Chicago; Kansas City, Mo., Lamy, N.M; Winslow, Ariz.; Barstow, Calif.; and Los Angeles before arriving in Oakland and San Francisco on Sept. 28. The project, supported by Levi’s, intends to distrbute donations and money raised from ticket sales along the route to partner cultural organizations, like the Walker Art Center, the Los Angeles Museum of Art and the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Participants, some of who will ride the train and others who will join en route, include the visual artists Urs Fischer, Carsten Holler, Liz Glynn, Ernesto Neto and Stephen Shore. The lineup of musical acts includes the Fiery Furnaces, Charlotte Gainsbourg and David Longstreth of the Dirty Projectors. The writers Rick Moody and Dave Hickey will also be on board, Mr. Aikten said, as well as the chefs Alice Waters and Leif Hedendal.
“This really came out of a kind of restlessness, the feeling that art forms are too often segregated, music played in the same clubs and art shown in the same galleries and museums,†Mr. Aitken said in an interview. “I felt like we needed to experiment with a new model. ! Maybe it’s naïve or maybe it’s utopian but the question is, ‘Can there be a kind of planet of voices that can exist, at least for a short time, when something like this happens?’ â€
