Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

This past Sunday, European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century was on view for the last time before the museum shifts gears over to its next special exhibition, Sacred Spain: Art and Belief in the Spanish World. EuroDesign is and was a magnificent achievement and a huge thanks goes out to everyone who made the show possible. Good work.

Even though the show has only been over for a few days now, I thought it would be interesting and a little fun to recap some of the online stuff that happened around European Design. Read the rest of this entry »

As the IMA website indicates, we have taken official possession of the Miller House and Garden in Columbus, Indiana. This will make the second National Historic Landmark property the IMA has in its collection (Oldfields-Lilly House and Gardens being the first). How’s that for bragging rights! As a practical matter however, home ownership is not all fun and games in this situation. Ahead lies a road of challenges for the staff working on MHG teams.

Columbus is an hour’s drive south of Indy, which makes it difficult to explore the house and conduct business with the current local staff. Director of Lilly House Operations Bradley Brooks, head of our team of six, has spent a lot of time on the phone and making the trek south in the run-up to taking possession of the property. He has interacted with everyone from members of the Miller family to a nephew of  Eero Saarinen. Bradley has been, and continues to be a very busy beaver.

The task of converting a residential property into a museum showcase has been an educational experience for our team, so far. It has forced us to look at all the things we do here at the museum, a lot of which we take for granted, and formulate how to adapt and transplant these practices to a former family home fifty miles away.

Read the rest of this entry »

One spring equinox a few years ago, a duo of artists called Theater of Inclusion designed and planted these trees on the IMA grounds, for one day only.

They didn’t design the accompanying clouds you see here, but what if they could have?

by Theater of Inclusion

Fellow IMA blogger Ed Bachta recently told me about a new film called Owning the Weather.  Premiering last week at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, the film tells the story of weather modification science.  The film features “seeders,” scientists who inject clouds with substances that hasten condensation, thereby making rain.  The doc also gives voice to philosophers on both sides of the debate about whether weather interventions are a handy solution to the global warming blues…or a sacrilegious crossing of the line between human and god. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Euro Design at the IMA

Let the conversation continue long after the thought-provoking Q&A sessions at the European Design Symposium on March 6th and 7th at the IMA.

Got something to say? We’d like to invite you to use this blog as a forum to ask questions and post comments about anything and everything to do with European Design.

By the way, footage from this weekend’s events will be on ArtBabble.org very soon, so keep an eye out!