Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

As a new segment this summer, the IMA Blog will be featuring a Tuesday Photo of the Week, highlighting juicy tidbits of info including works of art, artists, news, events, or locations.

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120 feet of words to be exact. Jack Kerouac captured the beating heart of a generation – one of wanderers, writers, and dreamers – with his iconic novel On the Road, written in one sweeping session of 20 days in the spring of 1951.

The single piece of paper (which is really tracing paper sheets taped together), ancient in its tea-like stain and torn edges, personal in its hand-written corrections, and inspiring in its fervent immediacy, is a testament to all that is, or was, “Beat” – a more free approach to self-expression, non-conformity, a bohemian lifestyle, among many other characteristics. The Beats wrote about sex, drugs, jazz – more than enough to shock our postwar nation’s elders and enough to invigorate their children. Kerouac compiled notes from journeys across America to create the closely autobiographical nature of On The Road, sometimes accompanied by anyone from Neal Cassady to Allen Ginsberg. Even though there was exceptional attention paid to Kerouac’s fortnight feat, the novel had been taking form long before the author’s almost overnight success, in between scribbling lines at Cassady’s and exploring each state he visited in great detail.

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No, despite popular demand, the IMA is not having a Willie Nelson retrospective. What can I say…write your congressman. Maybe next year. Thursday, June 26th is the opening of On The Road Again With Jack Kerouac and Robert Frank.

I’ve had the pleasure to work on the team designing this exhibition and we’re all really excited for next week’s opening. How can you go wrong? Kerouac’s original scroll for On The Road, surrounded by Frank’s series The Americans.

Most of you probably read On The Road in either high school or college. I read it after reading an interview with Bob Dylan, who said that it changed his life. Its crazy, Read the rest of this entry »

I forgot to plug this project in my post earlier today, so I am posting this short one. If you haven’t visited the Brooklyn Museum’s site to take part in Click! be sure you do it soon. An innovative crowd-curated exhibition, allows you to evaluate on-line submissions for the project. You only have until Friday, May 23rd to complete evaluations. So, don’t miss out!

Sean Miller is a participating artist in the exhibition On Procession. His project, the John Erikson Museum of Art, takes the form of miniature, portable museum galleries which he uses as a platform to host rotating exhibitions of other artists’ works. JEMA, named after Miller’s great-grandfather, was marched through the 2007 Art Parade presented by Deitch Projects, Paper Magazine and Creative Time. The Art Parade, an annual SoHo event since 2005, combines artworks solicited from an open call, museum-sponsored floats, and all types of rock n’ roll spectacle.

JEMA has been presented in other contexts, including other museums’ galleries. Beyond its obvious humor, JEMA offers an alternative vision of what it is to make an exhibition. As a portable museum, JEMA’s open construction and minimized logistical operations allow for more flexible or experimental programming than other kinds of museum galleries. Read the rest of this entry »