MEMPHIS, TENN.- In May, museum visitors will be able to watch and participate in a massive public art installation—and its subsequent deinstallation —at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

The Rhode Island-based artist collective Tape Art, known for creating over 500 temporary murals installed around the world, including reactions to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and the 2013 earthquake in Fukushima, Japan, will cap the museum’s centennial celebration with a gigantic installation on the Brooks’ façade. The latest installment in the museum’s centennial exhibition series Brooks Outside, Tape Art follows the performance of RedBall Memphis, which ran from April 28 through May 7, 2016, and Intrude, which dazzled Overton Park visitors on the Brooks plaza January 18 -29, 2017. Brooks Outside: Tape Art will activate and invigorate museum grounds by bringing art to the Brooks’ exterior during a 17-day run that began today.

The process began in August 2016, when Tape Art founder Michael Townsend and creative director Leah Smith traveled to Memphis for a site visit and created a concept that celebrates the images of women in the Brooks’ collection.

“We are making a really lovely artwork that tells a compelling story and includes as characters women players, culled from the museum’s permanent collection,” says Townsend.

Possible contenders include such popular figures as George Romney’s 18th century Portrait of Lady Wright, Marisol’s pop art Virgin Mary (from The Family), Red Grooms’ Memphis Minnie (from 2016’s Memphis on My Mind), Medusa (from Luca Giordano’s baroque-era Slaying of Medusa), the young girl depicted in William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s French salon painting At the Foot of the Cliff and more. These concepts will be incorporated into a massive work that is visually inspired by Girl Tree, a painting by Memphis’ own Carroll Cloar, a magic realist whose work is included in collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. As part of its centennial celebration, the Brooks dedicated a brand new gallery to Cloar’s work in September 2016.

“We’re thrilled to bring another Brooks Outside project to Memphis and its citizens,” says Executive Director Emily Ballew Neff . “As has happened with both RedBall Memphis and Intrude, we expect Tape Art to resonate long after its removal. We hope that this installation will encourage conversations about the Brooks, its mission, and its permanent collection, but also about the relevance of art and art museums in our community.”

Using ladders, a boom lift, and a bountiful amount of low-adhesive paper tape, Townsend, Smith and the Tape Art Crew began the mural-making process outside the Brooks Museum on Monday, May 8. The public is invited to drop by to observe the progress of the work, to participate and to interact with the artists.

Like Tape Art installations at the New York Aquarium, the Worcester Art Museum and Grand Rapids’ ArtPrize, the Memphis artwork will be intentionally temporary. Regardless of the time spent to create the mural, the installation will end with an invitation to the public to join in the removal process on Wednesday, May 24. Tape Art Finale: Party on the Plaza will take place from 4 to 7 p.m. with music, art-making, food trucks and more.