ROCKLAND—The Farnsworth Art Museum’s group The Collective has been shaking up the Museum’s buttoned down, traditional image in recent years with edgy art environments, but last Saturday night, they threw out a whole kit and caboodle with The Walker Arts Center’s Internet Cat Video Festival presented by The Farnsworth held Saturday Aug. 23.

That’s right, an event dedicated to viral cat videos.

If you’re thinking five middle-aged single ladies showed up in cat sweaters smelling faintly of Fancy Feast, get this—somewhere between 500-700 people showed up to the festival and fair, according to Kelly Finlay, the Farnsworth’s Education Coordinator.

“The reel of films were divvied up by genre,” she said. “The first part featured comedy videos and was my favorite, personally. It was so wonderful to hear the group laughing.  We also had a Hall of Fame collection, if you’ve ever seen the Grumpy Cat Internet meme. We also had an animated film category, like the Nyan cat, based on another Internet meme of an animated cartoon cat with the body of a Pop-Tart, flying through space. It also featured a selection of videos of the Henri Le Chat Noir videos, which depicts this cat with these existential ponderings in subtitles.” (Click on the videos to see Grumpy Cat and Henri Le Chat.)

For many, an introduction to these pop cultural phenomenons was secondary to the excellent people watching that took place in the first few hours of the festival, held in Rockland’s Harbor Park. Photographer Michael O’Neil roamed the crowds and reported seeing a lot of “hard core cat enthusiasts of all ages” in the early part of the evening. ”People who just really love cats and the event itself—this was their chance to come out. For the most part, 80 percent of the people there was wearing some feline-based paraphernalia, whether it was a hat, a t-shirt, a sticker, or face paint,” he said.

The event billed itself as a way to “raise questions, challenge assumptions, surprise people, and create a real, multi-sensory experience.” In the daylight hours before the films took place, the fair featured games, art activities, and food vendors, as well as “MASH" unit where stuffed animals could be surgically repaired. P.A.W.S. Animal Adoption Center also provided a "Cat Cuddle Booth" featuring adoptable cats.

The Farnsworth Art Museum is not the first to get in on the cat film festival craze.  In 2012, the world's first #CatVidFest was held at the Walker Art Center, a contemporary art museum in Minneapolis, which drew more than 10,000 people in 2012, launching comparisons to a new sort of “Burning Man” festival.

We can’t wait to see what The Collective has in store next. To see a gallery of the craziest cat photos, click here.

All photos courtesy Michael O'Neil from the Walker Art Center’s Internet Cat Video Festival, presented by the Farnsworth Art Museum.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com