A few weeks ago I followed through on a pact with myself to visit the Indiana Museum of Art solo.  The grounds in late spring are glorious and I spent as much time watching bold squirrels nibble on berries as I did experiencing the art inside the building.  It’s been a while for me since I visited what rates highly as a sunny afternoon destination in Indy.

From Flickr user SillyFrog

I went upstairs to see the Adaptation installation, and was immediately drawn to the unassuming Herrera exhibit, “Les Noces”.  It presents itself from outside as a placard and a pitch dark walkway leading into the unknown from which emanates the intense singing and occasional screaming of a Stravinsky scored ballet. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Art, Exhibitions, Guest Bloggers

To my great surprise, I frequently meet people in Indianapolis who ask where the Indianapolis Museum of Art is. I have always been a museophile, so it shocks me when people say they haven’t been to the art museum in their own home town. Wait, what else do you do on weekends?

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Filed under: Local, Musings

This blog post is the second written by IMA Public Affairs intern Sarah Miller. Read her first post Personal Art Appreciation. She recently earned a Master of Arts Management with a Visual Arts Concentration from Columbia College Chicago and currently works at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Illinois.

Do you have any memories related to Robert Indiana’s Love sculptures? Or Anish Kapoor’s “Bean” in Chicago? What about Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s saffron-colored gates in New York’s central park? How about one of those giant spiders by Louise Bourgeois…or those cows on parade? Did you ever take a picture with one of these or another public art work? Well, I surely have (see me below). Something about the interactive nature of public art, and the feeling that it informally exists in its spot for me, rather than for a gallery space or for someone’s wall, really helps me enjoy public art. And I think regardless of if you like a piece or don’t, it inevitably makes you aware of your space, your participation in it, and someone’s efforts to enrich or change it. As a friend recently reminded me, these works at least make you ask, “Why is this here?”

Saying hello to a Juan Munoz sculpture

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Filed under: Art, Local, Musings

That’s right, we are thrilled to announce the arrival of 10 new partners on ArtBabble! Along with these new partners comes a whole new batch of art videos to check out. Good luck getting any work done today! Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Art, New Media, Technology

I’ve developed a pretty thick skin over the years and have a real appreciation for a diversity of opinions.  I have always worked hard in my role at the IMA to encourage and draw out folks who think differently than I do.  That’s why I was not very bothered by Nina Simon’s initial comments about the IMA during last year’s plenary session of the Museums and the Web conference held here in Indianapolis.  Nor was I particularly inclined to answer what seemed to be a rather snarky blog article that Nina wrote entitled Avoiding the Participatory Ghetto which was featured on her Museum 2.0 blog. I was glad that Linda Duke, our Director of Education, answered some of the charges in the comments to that post, but again decided to hold my tongue.  With essentially a reprint of that blog article appearing in the most recent issue of AAM’s Museum Magazine under the title “Bait and Switch”, I feel that not responding at this point would communicate that I don’t care about what Nina is saying when in fact, I really do.

What most disturbs me about Nina’s argument is the clear lack of background work she put into crafting what amounts to a pretty scathing opinion of the IMA.  It seems from Nina’s comments that she is basing her views on a single visit to our galleries during a conference reception. I have no way of knowing how many of those 3 hours Nina spent in our exhibitions and galleries, but it seems that she didn’t bother to ask any staff members of the IMA about efforts we might be making to engage our visitors on-site and around the city.  Aside from a brief two minute encounter in the conference hall after her comments, Nina failed to probe in any depth about what (if any) strategy their might be behind our efforts on-site.

Experience and Engagement

In case you haven’t noticed, Art Museums are frequently considered to be the “stuffier”, less “engaging” older brothers to our sibling science, technology, and “experience” museums.  Nina draws at least some of her professional experience from this field, so perhaps we should cut her a little slack for missing a crucial challenge faced by art museums.

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Filed under: Education, New Media, Technology