We have spent some time on-site, working in the U.S. Pavilion and the Giardini as it prepares for an influx of visitors, filming the Commissioner, the IMA’s Lisa Freiman, as she gave an orientation to a group of interns who will tend to the Pavilion during the 6 month run of the show, and shooting the last of the artwork being installed and rehearsed (we can’t show you yet!) with Jennifer and Guillermo (that is, Allora & Calzadilla) looking on. We are working in tandem with photographers Tascha Horowitz, of the IMA, and Andrew Bordwin and Nick D’Emilio, of Andrew Bordwin Studio Inc., to document everything as it happens. We will be releasing more images and video online in the next few weeks, and you can look for the Gloria catalogue to come out later this summer.

Lisa Freiman discussing the exhibition with the summer interns.

Allora & Calzadilla watching the rehearsals.

We have also been gathering b-roll around Venice. We see the bright red Biennale advertising in every campo (they also provide the only benches in the square- smart!) We stopped in Piazza San Marco, took a quick tour of the Teatro la Fenice and hopped over the Ponte Accademia to visit Santa Maria della Salute. While the city is famously difficult to navigate, we have been able to find a lot of the famous attractions to shoot without much trouble and have been enjoying our share of Italian food and gelato.

We will continue to film as the Biennale opens this week, including VIP tours and vernissage celebrations, and you can look for almost everything we shoot to go up on the Biennale microsite. Also don’t forget to follow us on twitter @USPavilion11 for all the latest news from the Pavilion. As the Italians say- ciao!

I have the extreme pleasure of working on the IMA’s video team, a job which, while incorporating a large amount of logistics and planning, also includes the unique task of interviewing artists, designers, scholars and curators about projects they are working on with the IMA. I have to say, this is my favorite part of the job. I am definitely a “people person,” and I enjoy hearing firsthand from the artists as they explain their work, their inspirations and thoughts they had while making it, and the funny behind-the-scenes stories.  All of these elements help it come together as a meaningful experience with a work of art for me. This is also part of why the IMA has made a commitment to producing these videos. Not every visitor can sit down for 30 minutes with the artist (Marina Abramović excluded) so we have to find a meaningful, illustrative way to share their thoughts and motivations with our visitors (and the world).

In watching or conducting many interviews produced by the IMA over the past few years, I have learned a lot about how to speak to many different types of people to get the type of material we are looking for: explanatory for the general public, but not over-simplified for specialists and aficionados, shows the personality of the interviewee, and explains what the IMA is trying to do through the work or program we are discussing.

First, do your research. I have found that even the most planned interviews (think typed list of organized questions, lots of time, quiet interview location) have a peculiar way of going awry. It’s good to have a framework to base your questions on, but understand that the natural course of conversation, and small bits of information the artist brings up, may lead to better or deeper conversation on the topic. This is why a broad understanding of the artist’s work is helpful. Also, what is the scholarly basis for the exhibition or work for which you are gathering material? This may sound elementary, but you don’t want to base your line of questions around an artist’s use of materials when the curator is expounding on spiritual influences in the show.

Know your audience- and your interviewee. Who are you interviewing? Who will watch the resulting video? A famed scholar or author will require a different form of questioning than an emerging artist. Likewise, the resulting videos will have different audiences. Determining who it is that you are working with, and for whom, will lead to a stronger outcome.

Be respectful, but ask the hard questions. This makes me feel like I’m trying to be Oprah. However, I think it can be easy to ask surface questions or let the interviewee gloss over something which is vital to the understanding of their point of view. By understanding who the audience is, I can re-frame questions when I feel that the artist is simplifying or missing a key point. Following the thread of what the artist is saying is how to get the richest, most meaningful content.

Make it a conversation. Very little to none of my face or voice ends up in the final product, however, having a lively or engaged discussion with an artist results in better, more useful or dynamic footage. The person being interviewed may be uncomfortable, so creating a relaxed environment where they can feel comfortable to think about what they would like to say or pause for a breath is key. A sense of humor goes a long way.

Make steady eye contact, smile, but don’t be creepy, and don’t make any noise. This is harder than it sounds. I have found that I am an automatic “mhmmmm”-er. I had to work very hard to stop these conversational soothers. I have replaced this with ardent, almost nonstop, nodding (I only occasionally notice I am doing it!) Again, I try to not look too crazy. I think this is my unspoken cue to my interviewee that I am keenly listening to what they are saying.

Speaking of- Listen! This can be especially hard in an uncomfortable situation; my mind tends to race ahead to the next question when I am nervous. However, this is the most important part of being the interviewer.

So, why was I so afraid of Guillermo’s question? Truth be told, I had no reason to be. I was sufficiently prepared with multiple examples- I read the curatorial essay for the Biennale, found articles and blogs about their work and watched every bit of video I could find on the artists. I think mostly, I wanted him to know how much I knew and appreciated their work on this project, and I wanted to get the perfect footage during our interview.You will start to see clips of the footage showing up on the IMA’s Biennale website, so stay tuned and tell me how I did.

Fast forward four years, (five? I can’t keep track,) and a legitimate scene has developed in Indianapolis. Maybe it’s the hubbub surrounding the Big Game (you know the one), but things are abuzz.

First, there were a few blogs I started to see references to everywhere. I can’t decide if they were simply made more visible to me by social media, but all of a sudden, stylists, photographers, make up artists, dealers, and aficionados started coming out of the woodwork.

Fountain Square and beyond flowered with new, fantastic vintage/local shops like IndySwank, Homespun and Harloh’s. Indy’s own beauty blog, PrettyIndy started – another facet of  a good general style scene.

Then, this past year, the Indianapolis Fashion Collective was founded, to “unite, empower, showcase, and grow the Indianapolis area fashion industry through collaboration, education, and awareness.” I saw recently that they have started a discussion about shared studio space for local designers, a great resource when trying to get a small business off the ground and your basement isn’t cutting it.

Then, at a recent Indy fashion meetup, I heard about Midwest Fashion Week (how have I missed this?) and learned an international style maven moved to Bloomington. We even have a brand new street style blog. It was fun to meet local enthusiasts, designers, stylists and editors all working towards the same passion: advancing Indianapolis’s position on the fashion map.

Now, with intrepid curators Niloo Imami-Paydar and Petra Slinkard at the helm, the IMA has joined the chorus with the Fashion Arts Society, a group for true lovers of Fashion as high art.

Everyone came out for one of the falls most exciting events, the Project IMA Fashion Unbound Runway Show, and stayed to people watch at the Behind the Seams after party, sponsored by FAS.

If you love fashion as I do, consider finding a way to get involved. Join FAS, or the Fashion Collective, or submit to the Midwest Fashion week. It’s the involvement of many individuals that make it something we all want to be a part of. I’ll see you all for the opening of Material World!

Here are three IMA events we have recently posted video of, all of which I saw in person. The funny thing is, in each case I noticed or appreciated something new while watching the video that I had missed during the event.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright joined us recently for the opening of the exhibition Read My Pins: The Madeleine Albright Collection. I was very excited to film her earlier in the day- she is an amazing person and a wonderful role model for women of all ages.

Even though I was live-tweeting the Project IMA: Fashion Unbound Fashion Show, I  saw outfits for the first time when watching this video- they go by so quickly I missed them during the live events! I also loved seeing the materials used by each designer. This show was so much fun!

Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial is one of those times. The exhibition opens in February of 2011, and I know it will present multiple opportunities to engage members of our community in thoughtful, productive discussions about current events and relevant social issues. Through a grant we received from the NEA, we have been able to form a partnership with students and faculty at Lynhurst 7th and 8th Grade Center in Wayne Township.

Thornton Dial, Sr., "Don't Matter How Raggly the Flag, It Still Got to Tie Us Together"

This group of students—the Junior Giant Kings—is one of the most remarkable groups of young men I have ever worked with.  They are the coolest bunch of kids, and their relationships with each other, with their faculty sponsors and their growing relationship with art has been astounding to witness.

Gang strife is a growing problem in middle and high schools across the country, and Wayne Township is no exception.  The Junior Giant Kings is made up of a select group of Latino and African-American boys –two groups who are experiencing increased ethnic tensions in many Indianapolis schools–who must go through a fairly rigorous application process to join.  Within the group, they have daily discussions about social issues, cultural awareness and leadership.  They are led by a core group of committed and dedicated young teachers–incredible men who serve as positive role models to these boys and show them what potential lies within.

Perhaps the aspect of the Junior Giant Kings program that has proven to be most advantageous (both to the students and to us here at the IMA) is that their group meets every morning in home room—the administration gives them the time to build those relationships, have productive discussions and learn to trust and respect each other.  Developing these skills has allowed them to become mediators within their own school, taking it upon themselves to act as arbitrators between gang members and encouraging their peers to slow down, look fairly at a situation and be willing to hear each other out.

Where does the IMA fit in to this?  Let’s go back to Hard Truths.

A variety of special programs focused on the Thornton Dial exhibition is planned; one with the Junior Giant Kings has already begun.  We’ve designed a program that uses Visual Thinking Strategies (or VTS) as its core component.  VTS is a facilitated discussion method that, through discussions about works of art, encourages careful looking, development of critical thinking skills, increased use of vocabulary and openness to multiple points of view.  The discussions are completely student-driven and evolve based on participants’ comments, while the facilitator maintains a neutral and non-judgmental position throughout.
Through VTS, the students learn to look at artwork in a different way (or for the first time), yet in a way that allows them to incorporate their own experiences, observations and opinions without the threat of being corrected or criticized.  It is precisely this kind of discussion that can lead to more productive conflict resolution and a greater sense of understanding in their everyday lives.

We have had the great pleasure to visit Lynhurst on several occasions and to lead the Junior Giant Kings in VTS discussions.  Soon they will begin in-class activities that build on the skills VTS teaches and apply them through writing and other language arts experiences.  Perhaps the most rewarding experience I have shared with the Kings so far, however, was several weeks ago when they visited the museum.  Each month, we are featuring a different work by Thornton Dial on display as a sort of “preview piece”, and 13 boys came out one Friday afternoon (some even skipping basketball practice to come!) to discuss one of these pieces in addition to several other works of art throughout the galleries.

I am constantly astounded by the depth and insight teens can share through these sessions.  In a culture that supports machismo and defensiveness in its youth, it is rare but extraordinary to listen to the boys open up, speak freely and reflect on the art they’re seeing…and yet, through use of VTS coupled with the intricacies and ambiguous nature of Dial’s work, we spent almost 15 minutes discussing a single work of art.  The insightfulness of their observations and comments was exceptional.

I find myself so grateful and truly honored to have the chance to work with the Junior Giant Kings in this context and to be a part of how their love and appreciation for art is developing.  I believe teens and young people have a very important role to play in the museum and its galleries, and they deserve and need to be given opportunities to explore artwork in a safe and non-critical environment.

So, through the school visits, the IMA field trips, the in-class activities and a tour of the Dial show early in the new year, we hope to foster a sense of ownership and confidence amongst the Junior Giant Kings.  We are incredibly fortunate to have their teachers as advocates and partners in this effort, and to see how these phenomenal young men are well on their way to becoming phenomenal adults.

In 2009, the IMA was awarded the prestigious Medal of Honor from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. In order to offer a more personalized view of each institution receiving the award, IMLS partnered with a non-profit group called StoryCorps. If you’ve tuned into WFYI in the mornings, you may have heard some of the three minute interview segments that have been recorded by StoryCorps staff across the country.

The idea behind the StoryCorps project is to capture interviews between people—any people, anywhere—and archive them in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. This creates a firsthand account of contemporary American life, as told through the voices that make up our country. The range of topics is infinite, from tales about first loves and last moments, friendships and romances, memories of childhood and the bittersweet effects of aging.

In order to create a narrative of our own IMA history, we chose 18 people who have made an impact within the museum’s community. This group was but a small cross-section of individuals who have enriched our lives and our institution. Each person chose a companion to be their interviewer, and they came in, sat down, and started talking.

We didn’t want to stifle anyone’s creativity and dictate what the conversations should focus on, but being an art museum, we did ask that the sessions start with some account of a moment or event in the life of the interviewee in which art had a significant impact. Art was already the common thread shared by each of the 18 people who sat down to talk, so it wasn’t difficult to keep art as a central topic.

One example came from Dr. Jeffery Rothenberg and his wife, Joani. Jeff is an OB/GYN by profession but an artist by nature. He spoke of how his wife and family’s support helped him decide which role more importantly defines him.

Download audio file (jeff_rothenberg.mp3)
(audio clip courtesy of Long Haul Productions and StoryCorps)

Joani & Jeff Rothenberg

The payoff for me came each time a pair of people walked out of the recording “booth”. What I heard more than anything from these smiling and laughing pairs of friends, spouses, colleagues, mentors, and parents with their children, was that the chance to just sit and talk with one another was truly a gift.

That intimate setting gave them a chance to share things they’d never discussed before. How often do we have that opportunity in our daily lives? When was the last time you learned something new about someone to whom you’re already close?

So here is where I get a little teary-eyed, and the real value and meaning of this experience hits home. Among the people who took part in this project was Larry Hurt, a high school art teacher who had an extraordinary ability to connect with and inspire his students. Larry asked Phillip Lynam, a talented local artist and one of our IMA colleagues, to play the role of his interviewer. The two of them talked about how Larry had encouraged his students (Phillip among them) to find and freely express their talents and creativity.

Less than two weeks after they spoke with each other, Larry unexpectedly passed away. The shock of Larry’s death impacted many, many people, and his involvement throughout the Indianapolis community was made even more profound in his absence. Profound, too, was the gift of those 40 minutes that Phillip had to talk with his mentor and friend; to have a permanent record of Larry speaking about what inspired him and how he inspired others serves as a fitting farewell to a talented and beautiful person.

In our fast-paced world, we’re constantly bombarded with bits and pieces of information; rarely are we able to slow down and really listen to someone. For us, being able to welcome these people into our museum and ask them to share their stories was such a privilege. The Medal of Honor from IMLS is a great source of pride for the IMA, but for me, hearing these stories and knowing they will forever represent the heart and spirit of this museum was the real triumph. Pass the Kleenex.

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.

If you haven’t heard of Bloggers Anonymous, it’s an informal get together the IMA blog team puts together every couple of months to meet people from the local blogosphere, and put a face to a name with the local arts scene. Who gets to come? We  reached out to the official museum blog’s blogroll, which keeps us up to date on local happenings and includes greats like On the Cusp and MW Capacity. Also, our team is collectively connected to a wide array of people around Indianapolis and beyond, and we each follow blogs and people on twitter depending on our own personal interests. We decided to cast the net wide and get them all here to talk about social media and how they are using it in their daily lives, including blogs, facebook, and twitter.

The exciting twist for this event is we are throwing it right before the IMA screens two movies. You’ve probably been to Summer Nights, the IMA’s outdoor summer movie series. Yesterday marked the start of another event happening this year at the IMA, the Indianapolis International Film Festival. Tomorrow’s double header includes one of the IIFF offerings, a documentary called Best Worst Movie shown in the Toby, followed closely by Troll 2 (the subject of the first movie) in the outdoor theatre. Sometimes I want a documentary, sometimes I want Italian B Horror. Tomorrow night, they’re both on the menu!

Rumor has it we have tickets to give away for the Summer Nights/IIFF double feature, so join us at 6pm outside the museum store, on the ground floor at the IMA to talk shop and then we will head to the movies. We can all relax and watch a campy horror flick, I hear there’s nothing like it for a little bonding time!

Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra

Inspiration is a funny thing. It seems to be fleeting, one of the most important things in an artist’s life. Without it, the dreaded “block” which holds an artist immobile. How do artists find inspiration?

One of the most important and well-known cycles of inspiration is between artists and musicians. Last week, I was lucky enough to be in attendance when the Indianapolis Symphony and the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir performed “Towards the Unknown Region,” by Vaughn Williams. As his inspiration, Williams set one of Walt Whitman’s poems from his seminal work “Leaves of Grass” to orchestral accompaniment. The resulting work is a swelling, moving homage to life and death that perfectly captures Whitman’s tone. In fact, Williams was so inspired by “Leaves of Grass”, several years later he wrote A Sea Symphony, his very first symphony, and the work which made him famous.

After the beautiful performance, I couldn’t help but think, “Who has been inspired tonight?” It doesn’t have to be grand, and it doesn’t have to produce symphonies or watershed paintings. Inspiration can be as simple as being moved to read some poetry.

I’m heading out to pick up “Leaves of Grass.” What inspires you?