Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

Image from toxel.com

While roaming the Internet one day, I ran across a design website with photos of fun coffee mugs of all shapes and sizes. It made me think of our newly opened European Design exhibit, and work, and drinking coffee since that’s what I do at work–drink coffee.

I found some more interesting websites about coffee, especially ones where coffee intersects with art and design. And I thought back to the old days when our coffee arrangement here at the IMA was entirely different. Cue the harp sound effects and wavy visual for a flashback… Read the rest of this entry »

The blogs tend to concentrate on the “tubes” and the IMA’s presence in the virtual world, so I’d like to take a moment and focus everyone’s attention back on the brick & mortar museum. I have been conducting a little research on the IMA, comparing it to some sister institutions – Detroit, Minneapolis, Cleveland, and St. Louis – and how our security department stacks up to others in operational costs and “bang for the buck.” During this research I have come to reaffirm, at least in my own mind, how unique the IMA is and how great our responsibility is to protect it.

I’ll try not to belabor the point with too many statistics, but in sheer square footage – 669,000 and change in the main building – the IMA ranks in the top ten out of about 230 other art museums. That’s a lot of square footage our security officers have to patrol each day, 24/7/365. And in that space is an art collection of roughly 54,000 pieces of art from all over the world and from all time periods.

Now, numerous other institutions have bigger buildings or more artwork, so let me add a few other amenities that the IMA has: a reference library, studio/education space, retail and dining areas, the 500-seat Deer-Zink events pavilion, and The Toby, a 600-seat theater to augment our warm-weather outdoor amphitheater.

IMA's campus and LOVE

Read the rest of this entry »

For me, Penrod is the culmination of the year’s major activities.  Once Penrod is put to bed, Security is coasting toward the end of the year.  Sure, we just had the 125th anniversary gala (I left before the auction ended), but it was just another party to us.  We’ve done a hundred parties – smile, keep drinks out of the galleries, corral Freiman’s group on the 2nd floor – same old, same old.  I’m talking about the heavy lifting.

The end of the Roman Art exhibit started the year for us.  As usual, visitors waited till the last weekend to come see the show.  The line looped completely through all the first floor galleries.  We kept the visitors occupied and relatively happy while they waited two hours to see the show.
Read the rest of this entry »

It wasn’t Security Camp, but I recently got to travel to Boston with Protection Services director Pam Godfrey for a museum security conference.  The International Foundation for Cultural Property Protection and the Fogg Art Museum hosted participants from the US and Europe for four days of lectures, certification sessions, networking, and technology demos.  Lecturers included Noah Charney from the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, Ellie Bruggeman from the Museum Security Network, founding director of IFCPP Steve Layne, as well as representatives from museum and library facilities on the Harvard campus.  We heard a lot about emergency response planning, workplace violence, and art theft, along with taking side trips to Harvard and the Museum of Fine Arts.

The great thing about this conference, and the National Conference hosted annually by the Smithsonian, is that they are oriented around museums and other cultural institutions, such as libraries and historical properties.  Other conferences, such as the ASIS annual shindig, are huge and cover the whole spectrum of security issues, including securing nuclear facilities.  Not much fissionable material here at the IMA, except Mindy when contractors want to bend safety rules.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was down in exhibition holding the other day, talking with some of the Installation guys about a Tim Hawkinson piece called Moebius Ship. The piece is huge – about 9 feet across – and the conversation brought to mind how Contemporary art poses unique challenges to Security staff that aren’t usually an issue with more traditional art.

Contemporary art is frequently made up of everyday materials and items familiar to normal, everyday people. As such, visitors are not always sure how to react to the art and oftentimes behave contrary to what we would wish. IMA has artwork composed of everything from TVs (Nam June Paik), projectors (Kara Walker), and common furniture (Vito Acconci, Bill Woodrow) to electronic signs (Jenny Holzer) and neon lights (Robert Irwin, soon). We even have flat art on the floor instead of on the wall (Adrian Schiess). Visitors want to sit on the furniture and play with the electronic equipment. They want to TOUCH the stuff, for crying out loud!

Read the rest of this entry »