And you can see how, I mean, it’s painted, this bravura, I mean this coil and the light and then the incredible translucency of the peeled fruit. It’s hard to imagine now how it must have looked... Well, we are always going to be looking at and celebrating that the stuff of the world, you know.

Still Life with a Chinese Porcelain Jar by Willem Kalf

Recently, this work  has caught my attention again, as I’ve had the opportunity to spend a bit of time in the galleries here at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. I love the process of “getting to know” a work of art; the way it becomes like a familiar friend, and yet somehow, each time completely delightful and new.  It has me thinking about what catches my attention in each one, and some similarities between the very disparate works that I love. The first thing to come to mind? FOOD.

Some of my favorite works of art, both in this museum and elsewhere, feature fruit prominently. I suppose this could be attributed to “celebrating the stuff of the world,” as Mark Doty said. Undeniably, there is a universal connection between the human experience and the pleasure of eating good food. Artists have used food extensively as symbols in their work throughout the history of painting. For me, it has to do with the beauty of so many things we eat. I am amazed by the endless interpretation of something as simplistic as a bowl of apples.

Here are a few of my favorite food-related works of art from around the country.

I saw this painting in a Gauguin exhibition at the Met. It’s one of my favorites of Gauguin’s, both in style and subject, and I came to appreciate it more after I learned about his body of work and influence on the painters of his time in Gauguin and the Generation of the 1890s.

Two Tahitian Women with Mangoes by Paul Gauguin

I originally was introduced to the work of Ellsworth Kelly by way of his color field paintings. But the images I can’t get out of my head are his simple line drawings of fruit.

Apples by Ellsworth Kelly

And finally, for something completely different, there is something so jubilant and inviting about the cherry perched atop the spoon in this famous sculpture from Minneapolis.

Spoonbridge and Cherry, by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen

Needless to say, I also loved listening to Alice Waters of Chez Panisse speak about food and nutrition when she was here last year.

What works of art with food do you love?

I have the distinct pleasure of being in Daniel’s class this fall, Museums and Technology.  While it is surprising for my classmates that I would take a class about something I do already, I am excited for the opportunity to explore more thoroughly the meaning of technology for the museum experience and how the visitor is affected by these changes. I see continual parallels between issues encountered with visitors in physical space and issues we are encountering all over again in our digital spaces. I’ve talked about Twitter before and I have been thinking about how it is harnessed by museums and where we are going wrong.

We were talking about Twitter again in a recent class, more specifically what we consider to be a successful museum tweet, and why. It’s very hard to nail down, and even harder to do. The main reason is because it’s so hard to avoid becoming a marketing ploy, something which happens without rapt attention. A museums use of twitter now stands as an analogy for the way the actual museum interacts with its visitors and the traditional barrier between the inner workings of an institution and the public at large. So many museums need to release their stranglehold on twitter feeds to actually let interesting information get out.

I was at the Indianapolis Greek Festival this past weekend, and I couldn’t help to think that they were doing something right.

There were throngs of people, tons of Greek food, everyone jostling and yelling and having a great time, but here’s the part that baffled me- you had to pay to get in, and the food was delicious, but quite pricey. What is the Holy Trinity parish doing that connects so much with their audience that museums cannot seem to do? I think we can be the Agora marketplace discussed by Dr. Steven Zucker (@drszucker) and Dr. Nancy Proctor (@nancyproctor) a vibrant place for community and discussion, in the same way that the Greek festival is. I think the problem is balance- how do we sell ourselves as experts in our field while maintaining that we want everyone else’s opinion, too?

Some people are getting it right, figuring out how to sift through all the noise and clutter to connect with their audience while maintaining their voice. One such person is the British musician Imogen Heap, who felt a divide between herself and her fans before she started to utilize blogs and Twitter, not dissimilar to the separation between and institution and it’s community. In a recent interview with Melissa Block on NPR, she describes the divide quite succinctly. She then discusses what it’s like to have that direct connection throughout the process of making her music.

It’s been so amazing. I’ve always struggled with this barrier that I felt like I’d had up until blogging came along. Just one comment from somebody really sparks something in me. It doesn’t need to be this huge wall between me and the listeners anymore. I really thrive on that.”

@ImogenHeap gets it- the audience has become part of the process, and there’s no going back.

One of the most frequent comments I hear is about how we are located in a “strange place,” way up on 38th street. It’s true, we do not sit on “museum row” in downtown Indianapolis, but I think the current location gives us many different opportunities that the museum would never be able to explore if it remained downtown. There are many benefits from being slightly off the beaten path: the latest is a current project everyone is very excited about- 100 Acres, the Virginia B Fairbanks Art and Nature Park.

The local arts and culture community in Indianapolis is vibrant and thriving, in spite of the economy and our community’s singular sports focus (No judgment, I’m a huge Colts fan, 14 days ’til preseason starts, etc. I just don’t think sports need to come at the high price of culture) The Indianapolis Museum of Art’s current location has the potential to give us the feeling of a destination, a calm refuge in the heart of a bustlng downtown.

But why does it matter where we are located? Is the difference between downtown and 38th St. such a great one?

Other museums have explored different options for their unique needs of “place,” for different reasons. Several museums have opened up satellite locations: the Guggenheim spread to multiple countries, including Spain and Germany, (and Las Vegas!) increasing the international audiences the museum is accessable to. The Getty has the Villa, which specifically houses their Roman and Etruscan art collection, so that location can focus on that one subsection of their collection. Other museums operate without physical locations, such as The International Museum of Women. It doesn’t yet have a physical site, but builds community through exhibitions online,  lectures and events as they work toward a physical building.

All of these museums are reacting to their visitors and what they need from each institution. The most important aspect of location for museums and cultural centers is visitors and community. Physical space is a large part of what defines communal identity, and concepts like nationalism and even the sports team you favor arise from where you were born. We as humans like what we know, and we know what’s around. Shouldn’t our closest neighbors love us and visit the most? Yes, but often, they don’t.

Museums are defined by who comes to visit them and who they are reaching, something all museums should have a firm grasp on. We want to know who comes, and more importantly, know who doesn’t. This is where it gets tricky. I feel that ultimately, the current model of visitor-to-institution relationship comes down to the same patterns. Museums seek out new and different audiences, but they don’t come, regardless of the effort. Generally, the same people who care about the museum keep coming, and the museum continues to tailor it’s exhibits and activities for that same group. I suppose it’s only up to us to change this… more on that next time.

In the recent days, I have watched and listened as social media innovates political process in Iran. Twitter has been a powerful forum for a newsfeed out of the country, allowing people to photograph, video and blog about events in real time, even as more traditional journalists are being asked to leave.

Listening to a segment about it on the radio, I couldn’t help but think about the massive change to how news is found and the way crowdsourcing of information has so drastically changed the source of the news we get, and for museums, how closely this is tied to the changing face of visitor interactions through the web. Nina Simon, in this article at Museum2.0, writes,

For people who are deeply immersed in social media, social networks are already a much heavier influence on personal choices–where to visit, what concert to attend–than traditional advertising. Which means that your organization’s website–a brochure out in the wilderness of the Web–is only going to remain relevant and useful as a marketing piece if it is being referenced in the social context of your users’ lives.

Different people and institutions have found vastly different approaches to garnering information from their audiences.

Some museums have decided to use crowdsourcing, which can be appealing to visitors, in a way that is helpful to what the museum wants to accomplish. The Brooklyn Museum’s Shelley Bernstein wrote about a new project called Freeze Tag! where Brooklyn decided to utilize their loyal taggers to help control errant or incorrect information. Putting control back in the hands of the visitor can be risky, but, like Wikipedia, ultimately a project where passionate people and the wisdom of crowds wins out in the end. Brooklyn is a leader in integrating the visitor into the museums practice in innovative ways. With or without social media, how can other museums use this model to further their own goals?

Certainly, insta-media has increased the demand for transparency. Last week, Tyler Green and Christopher Knight tweeted and blogged about the dubious ethics in a private sale of works of art at the Orange County Museum of Art. These exchanges led to a heated discussion of the readers of the respected entries, including people representing both sides of the argument, and lots of scrutiny at the museum. Did the museum miss a chance to lead these discussions in the first place?

The problems start when the institution places itself on these social media sites, but don’t seem ready to hear what their devoted fan have to say. Douglas McLennan, of  Diacritical says,

…traditional PR notices are not only ineffective in this new era of many-to-many communication, but can make things worse. And what might have been a real opportunity to meaningfully engage this community has been lost.

Can a museum be listening all the time? In the world of public relations and standards, the casual conversation style of the Facebook world must seem completely alien.

The voice of the audience has never been as available to museums as it is now. Museums small and large have been all over Facebook and Twitter, my social media outlets of choice, trying to add fans and establish a voice that is cohesive with the museum’s image. Let’s imagine there is a museum out there doing it all perfectly. They generate lots of discussion and suggestions from their core audience of loyal visitors and donors…. What now? This next step is crucial and the point of getting involved in social media in the first place, and it is up to each museum.  How and when is that museum going to listen?

It’s my hope that we will continue to see the flowering of visitors being welcomed into the museum conversation, worldwide, with social media just being an example of ways to welcome them into the rest of the practices in the institution. If we want the community to value our institutions, we can strengthen the relationship by showing how much we value them.

What I did on my Summer Vacation

or, How I learned to Stop Worrying and be a Good Intern

No kidding, internships have the potential to be awful. You could be stuck on coffee and filing duty. If you’re in that situation, you kind of have to put your ego to the side and be willing to do the grunt work. You can think about it as the chance to earn the respect of the people you are interning for, thus leading to your acquiring more thought provoking projects. A truly lucky intern will have both a boss that lets them manage some projects throughout their time at the institution, and the foresight to take advantage of this opportunity.

Even if you have a great situation with your boss, it can be difficult to get comfortable in your duties. In the beginning, one of the hardest parts for me was feeling confident in taking initiative. Not because I am not capable of it, but because I really wanted to make sure I was doing everything right.

As I was vacillating about the details of my summer project, one of the most helpful things Despi said was, “I can write this for you, but I think it will be more valuable to have you try it yourself.” She gave me the permission I needed to take control of the project, but also to potentially fail. Project management is one of the most difficult types of experience to gain, because it can only be learned through hard work, trial and error. It’s those ‘real life’ experiences of deadlines and organization that make internships a vital part of the learning experience.

So, I’ve learned a lot this summer. I’ve learned to write down everything. Simple but effective; this also really helps fight ‘the yawns’ in a boring meeting. I’ve also learned not to be afraid to ask all the clarifying questions you need. Your manager will not be annoyed, but instead will be thankful that they have someone who pays attention to details. Try to make yourself indispensable! Another major goal of interning is to meet the people in your future field. When a position opens up at the museum, you want every person you worked for to think of your name.

• Always say yes when another opportunity to help arises. Be flexible and available. (this one’s from me!)
• “Be open minded and willing to try new things. Look for opportunities to grow. Don’t be too hard on yourself if it doesn’t pan out. “- Emily Blyze, Development Researcher
• “Don’t be afraid to ask for the job you want. If there’s an opening, go for it! Internships are an opportunity to get your foot in the door.” – Amber Laibe, Manager of Affiliate and Volunteer Services
• “Get involved in as many things at the organization as possible. Put yourself out there!” -Meg Liffick, Communications Manager
• “Other than hygiene? Make the most of it.”- Daniel Incandela, Director of New Media

If you have advice about internships in general, or to someone thinking about interning at the IMA, leave a comment!

In closing,

To the staff in MIS, Education, Marketing, and Development, thank you for a wonderful Summer. I was very lucky to get to interact with so many departments. To New Media, I hope I haven’t scarred you too much. I had a great time!

I had the pleasure of taking a tour through the IMA’s conservation lab last week, for a chance to get a quick look at their space and see a sliver of all of the amazing things that go on down there. I am intrigued by conservation: it requires a high degree of patience, the hand skills of a surgeon and knowledge of a wide range of subjects like chemistry and art history. The lab is a huge space, 7000 sq. ft, and has separate rooms for painting, works on paper, sculpture and textiles.

The last room we toured, textile and fashion conservation, was the highlight for me. I have taken some Costume History classes, so I’ve had a minute amount of first hand experience handling the F.I.T. collection- and this was mostly for examining construction. I don’t really know anything about the steps that need to be taken for preservation or display. They mentioned Shared Beauty, an exhibition of Eastern rugs and Western beaded handbags, which had recently gone up in the Paul Textile Arts Gallery. So, I took a swing through the exhibit to see what it was all about. I was floored! I was hooked! Okay, no more rug puns.

I decided to learn a little more about Shared Beauty, and got a chance to meet with Kathleen Kiefer, the Senior Conservator of Textiles, and Jessica Barner, the textile conservation technician. Kathleen explained a little more about the work they did to get the bags and rugs ready for the show, and Jessica gave me a tour of the lab and the gallery space, showing me some specific examples of the work they did to prepare the objects for the show.

Most of these objects were in great condition, and the vast majority of their time and effort went into preparing the rugs for hanging. It’s a delicate process involving, first, the repair of any damage the rug might have sustained, like worn or loose areas, but mostly the careful stitching of Velcro (on a twill tape support backing and perfectly centered) onto the backs of the rugs. This matches up to Velcro that is affixed to the wall. The silk rugs get propped onto strainers, angled boards covered in ultra-suede, to remove some of the pull of gravity off their more delicate knots and weave. Kathleen also mentioned that they had to devise a safe way to get the upward facing fringe to lay flat against the strainers. She used gold thread, tacked at intervals, to combat gravity and invisibly keep the fringe upright.

For the bags, not much work was needed. However, laying flat with no armatures or mounts, the bags did need a little more body shape. Kathleen and Jessica (assisted by Petra Slinkard, Curatorial Assistant, Textile and Fashion Arts; Brose Partington, Mount Maker; and Susan Mefford, a Textile Lab volunteer) created custom pillows for each one out of specially selected materials. Because the bags are enclosed in cases, the most important aspect is the material in and around them. A lot of fabrics and materials like plastics will give off gases harmful to the objects nearby. The ultra-suede used for displays is chosen specifically for its chemical stability. It also comes in lots of colors!

I highly recommend this exhibit. The bags are breath-taking in their intricacy; they glitter in their cases, miniature representations of the motifs on the rugs. The rugs are grand, lush interpretations of millennia old traditions, but look so modern. I longed to touch everything- a feeling, I think, that is natural in a gallery of objects so deliciously tactile. When you visit, you can think about all the loving attention each object got in order to make it there for you!

• Shared Beauty is open on the second floor through March 8, 2009.
• Simply Halston, a sampling of women’s wear by (Hoosier!) fashion designer Roy Halston Frowick, is open in the gallery next door until January 4th, 2009.
• The word textile, from the Latin texere, to weave, technically means interwoven threads, while fabric can mean woven, knit, looped, knotted, or fused fibers.
• The oldest carpet in the world, the Pazyryk carpet from 500 B.C.E., was discovered frozen in a Siberian cave burial site in 1949.
• The rugs in this show come from 5 major areas: Iran, Turkey, Caucasus (modern day Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia), India, and Turkmenistan.
• The IMA began their textile collection in 1888 with the purchase of an Irish embroidery.

One of my favorite pieces in the IMA’s collection is a delicately textured work entitled Duvor, or ‘Communal Cloth,’ by Ghanian born artist El Anatsui. He lives and works in Nigeria as a sculptor and professor.

Duvor is a shimmery, undulating sculpture, made from thousands of collected bottle caps and copper wire, and reminiscent of fabric or chain mail. It hangs in the hallway of the second floor, between the African and Fashion Textile Galleries. Smart move, IMA. This work will stop you in your tracks.

Duvor is captivating, and it makes a strong statement about tradition, trash, beauty and modern Africa. Sustainability is a buzzword now popular in relation to global warming and going green, but not necessarily something I expected to find at IMA. He confronts the social problem of trash by transforming and repurposing it, sustainability at its most beautiful. The patterning is homage to the textiles of Western Africa, including Kente cloth, a woven textile which is known as nwentoma in Ghana.

Anatsui’s sculpture background is evident in the delicate forms created by the rippling and bunching of his ‘fabric,’ something I would guess is not easy to coax out of bits of metal. The installation process with the IMA team shows how he works with the metal until he gets it just right.

As I have thought about this work, fueled by recent readings, I have been thinking about how something like this is classified. Duvor is many things. It is inherently African. It was created in 2007, so it is contemporary. It is also technically a part of the Fashion and Textile collection here at the museum. I know that designating categories is how we find things; we sort by time, place, origin, material, color, size, etc. But I wonder if something like this can ever be all three, equally. Is it just our nature to want a primary category?

Ultimately, where does this object fit in? Who should decide where it goes? Ponder that, and discover some things you might not have already known.

• El Anatsui studied Sculpture and Art Education, and teaches at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

• Ghana and Nigeria are along the West coast of Africa.

• It is 5765 Miles from Indianapolis to Accra, Ghana.

• The word Kente comes from kenten, for basket.

• Kente cloth patterns are associated with stories and proverbs, which give the specific patterns their names.

• Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy cost of processing it new.

• One recycled aluminum can saves enough energy to run a T.V. for 3 hours.

I hate being stuck on a machine in a gym, just staring at the back sweat of the guy in front of me. To combat this, I have been taking an opportunity of the gorgeous weather and walking the Monon. Now, I am not an outdoorsy person, but being outside in the sun and fresh air is fulfilling- just add some bird chirps and I really feel like I am communing with Mother Earth. The trail provides changing scenery and a different experience each time, something missing from the gym.

My main walking partner left on Saturday for a month-long camping and road trip with her family in Montana (talk about outdoorsy!) and I have been looking for new walking routes to mix it up in her absence. I was very excited to discover the Central Canal Towpath and its connection to the trail around the 35 acre, man-made lake at the IMA’s Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park.

While I had heard about the more formal building that will be opening in 2009, I thought that all of this property was closed until that time. I was surprised when I found out yesterday that the peaceful, shady trail that runs around the lake is open and accessible from the IMA grounds, as well as the towpath.

I walked down to check it out yesterday, making my way down the path and across the bridge. I thought I had turned the wrong way because the trees get pretty dense, and it really doesn’t seem like there could be such a large lake in that direction. Suddenly, you come into a clearing, with the lake in front of you and a beautiful meadow to the left.

I had just started exploring when a flash of lightning appeared in the suddenly ominous clouds, and I headed for the museum. Thank goodness, I just missed a total downpour! I am looking forward to walking the full loop someday soon, so I can let you know what is on the other side. For now, I’ll share what I have already learned…

• The Art and Nature Park, Canal Central Towpath and red bridge can be accessed any day of the week by a road between the museum building and the Lilly-Oldfeilds house or a flight of stone steps connected to the Oldfeilds gardens.
• The Art and Nature Park can get very muddy after it rains.
• The red bridge connecting the IMA to the Central Canal Towpath and the Art and Nature Park was built in the 1870’s and restored in 1999.
• In a vegetation survey, 187 plant species were observed in the Art and Nature Park.
• There are rumors of a naked jogger using the paths.
• Naked joggers are neither art nor nature.
• There is a public forum at the IMA about the Art and Nature Park on June 19th, 2008.
• It’s about 1 mile around the path loop at the Art and Nature Park.
• It’s about 2.5 miles from the Butler University campus to the IMA along the Towpath, including once around the Art and Nature Park path loop.
• It’s about 5 miles from Broad Ripple to the IMA along the Towpath, including once around the Art and Nature Park path loop.

Do you have any juicy tidbits or stories to add about the Art and Nature Park?

As you may know from reading the Nugget Factory post a few weeks ago, all of the members of the Nugget Factory have names that begin with ‘D’. When (D)Emily approached us about the possibility of an internship, it seemed a requirement for her to work into that somehow. She started work this morning and will be with us at least through the summer…sometimes interns end up being around forever. That’s how we ended up with Danny.

(D)Emily is a brilliant and brave soul who contacted Daniel and I after we guest-lectured in one of her IUPUI museum studies classes. Her proactive spirit payed off and we cobbled together a project proposal that is actually pretty cool. We will spend the summer working on web projects of all sorts, some in collaboration with Meg. I must say that I am already overjoyed at (D)Emily’s potential to help the Nugget Factory shine even brighter. (I am listening to Madonna’s ‘Lucky Star’ as I type this, doesn’t that just sum it all up?)

Have a great story about a past internship? Motivational words for IMA’s 2008 class? Want to give props to your own intern? Do it all here. With any luck, we can get this blog post included in the mandatory orientation materials for IMA interns.