From an article on the opening:
For those who may not be familiar with PostSecret, it began four years ago when Frank Warren, a Germantown, Md., resident, decided to try an idea at the annual Artomatic exhibition in Washington, D. C. His idea: To pass out blank postcards to complete strangers in hopes they would return them with a personal secret and a doodle jotted on one side.
The postcards came pouring in and Warren put them on display, instantly becoming the talk of the exhibition. What Warren did not expect was that the postcards would continue filling his mailbox, long after the exhibition came to an end. Before long, he was receiving postcards with witty, depressing, shocking, engaging and even insulting secrets from every state in the country.
Warren decided to create an online blog to start posting the secrets he was receiving. Then, postcards started arriving regularly from Australia, India, the United Kingdom and beyond.
“ I realized I had tapped into something that was there all the time — something full of mystery and wonder, ” Warren said. “ I quickly realized I was no longer the leader of the project. PostSecret had a life of its own. ”
Four years later, Warren continues to receive more than 1, 000 postcards per week from around the world. The PostSecret site, www. postsecretcommunity. com, averages six million hits per month. To put things into perspective, that’s more visitors than eBay.
PostSecret — a sampling of more than 450 PostSecret postcards — will be on display Dec. 13 through Feb. 1 at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Over the past four years, the online version of PostSecret has become one of the most popular forums of conceptual art, possibly ever....
In addition to providing an important outlet, Warren believes PostSecret represents an opportunity for anyone, anywhere to add to the story of life. And that, he said, is the truest form of art.
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