Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

I’m actually talking about Easter Eggs in the technology sense. Hidden tips, tricks, messages and so on. A bunch of us have been working on TAP: Sacred Spain for some time now and it’s been slightly exhausting.  With the exhibition, Sacred  Spain: Art & Belief in the Spanish World, opening this weekend, it’s been a mad dash to finalize this exhibition experience that features audio commentary, music, polls, videos and high res imagery, all accessible for $5 on an iPod Touch.

X-Ray of the Virgin of Guadalupe

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As you know the Sacred Spain exhibition is almost here at the IMA, and to put you in the right frame of mind Nourish Café is offering a special 2 week menu called Tastes of Spain!  As a food junkie, I am pretty excited to try everything and from what I’ve heard it tastes amazing. I’ve also been told the rest of October will have Spain inspired menu items and ingredients.

Check out the Tastes of Spain 2 week menu after the jump as I get back to Sacred Spain TAP design tasks and website updates. Stay tuned for Daniel’s post tomorrow with some exciting info about the multimedia goodies we’ve been working on!

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As publicized on the exhibition web site and in IMA’s Previews Magazine, we will be offering an iPod Touch driven multimedia tour of our exhibition, Sacred Spain, called “TAP into Sacred Spain”.  The software development side of TAP is mostly complete.  Now the work primarily lies in the hands of the content creators.  TAP’s software design is somewhat interesting in itself.  The content creators actually manage the tour content in a Drupal powered web site.  We can export the tour and all associated media from the site as a plugin for the iPhone application.  We developed an XMLSchema, TourML (pronouced “turmoil”), in which we conform to.  The Dallas Museum of Art is actually using the same format to drive a tour that is not a native iPhone app, but rather a mobile aware web site.  They have an excellent video podcast which describes this.  You can find out more about this collaboration and more by visiting the MuseumMobile Wiki.

I’m going to let the images do most the talking, but please note that none of the design or content is completely finalized below. Read the rest of this entry »

Acclaimed film director Julie Dash worked with six area high school students over the course of their participation in the IMA’s Museum Apprentice Program to produce short films featured in the exhibition Smuggling Daydreams into Reality: Yesterday, Today and Forever.

The exhibition opened Saturday and runs through January 18, 2010 in the IMA’s Star Studio. I spent my Tuesday lunch in the exhibition. The students’ video works and the film documenting the process with Dash drew me in. I was also tempted to add my own daydream to an IMA Flickr set shown in the exhibition as a slideshow. But my stomach was growling so I’ll have to go back.

I was delighted to sit down with Julie for a quick chat earlier this year.

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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 »