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.
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Author (and goalkeeper), Albert Camus, wrote - “All that I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football.”

I also owe a lot to football and it’s something I’m always willing to discuss, play or watch. It’s even more appropriate to discuss today and even into the summer. In a matter of hours, over in Moscow, the Champions League Final kicks off featuring an all-English match up of Chelsea FC and Manchester United FC (I’m rooting for Man U). In a matter of a few weeks (17 days to be exact), the European Championships begin, sadly without England, but I’ll be rooting for the Orange Crush (that would be the Dutch National Team) and glued to every game I can catch on TV.
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“Signage” is a popular term around museum marketing offices. It gets a work order, designed, produced, and lives out its purpose. But what happens to the dozens of exhibition and museum signs when the show is over, the program done or the sign is just passed its prime?

A company called BetterWall allows you to buy those exhibition banners from around the world to become timeless works of art for your home or business. Started by a husband-wife team of environmental consultant and art historian, BetterWall works with museums through its “Recycle and Reuse Program” to help museums remain green by taking tons of vinyl banners off their hands and selling them, giving a portion of the profits back to the museums. I have a National Portrait Gallery, George Washington “Lansdowne” sign that used to be displayed on the Mall in Washington, D.C. framed in my living room, but this article by a Washington Post reporter was the first time I had heard of a company who made authentic museum advertising available to the public.

As unique objects produced in limited editions, the banners embody great art, great museums, and contemporary advertising trends. — BetterWall

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