Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

Tentacles of the Beast, 2008

I just returned from a trip to New York in the height of the August heat with all of the lovely smells and suffocating humidity that comes with it. The goal of this trip? To spend as much time with artists and their work as possible, to slip into the city’s unique rhythms and magic anonymously and deeply. To see again.

My first experience with art on this trip happened unexpectedly and almost immediately. When I got to my Midtown hotel to drop off my bags before rushing down to a Chelsea studio on 26th Street, I pulled back my curtains and opened the windows, letting in the outside air to equalize the freezing air in my room. Set before me was a Hitchcockian scene, a 21st century Rear Window. I looked outside of my room on the eighth floor and saw various people engaged in quiet, disparate activities: in one window a woman busy at her desk, in another two people kissing, and an old man walking out onto the fire escape to grab a secret smoke. There were silent intimate recognitions, an awareness that we were all seeing each other, despite our resistance to acknowledging it, a fierce refusal to allow our eyes to meet directly. Extreme privacy and exposure both at once. I was reminded of the Impressionist era opera paintings where the subject of the work is spectatorship, the reciprocal experience of looking and being looked at. What happens in the space between.
Read the rest of this entry »

Full contact rock paper scissors. Passing an ice bucket from person to person with only your feet. Hurling rubber chickens and stuffed monkeys. Primal screams. It’s all in a days work at the IMA.

I will never deny that working in a museum is fun, but nothing has compared to Monday and Tuesday of this week. From playful games to thoughtful discussions, a group of IMA staff led by the artist collective (and former guest bloggers) Type A spent 2 full days participating in team-building exercises focused on the IMA’s forthcoming Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park. These games, challenges and discussions were meant to not only help strengthen the bonds between a diverse group of IMA staff, but ultimately to inform the final commissioned work that Type A will create for the Art and Nature Park. Read the rest of this entry »