Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

Have you missed John Sloan’s painting Red Kimono on the Roof?  If you have, you are not alone.  The painting has not been on display for almost a year. Works come and go from gallery walls for a variety of reasons, but often they are on loan to another museum for an exhibition.

The story of the departure of the John Sloan began in July 2006 when the IMA director received a letter from another institution requesting the loan of Red Kimono on the Roof for an exhibition on Sloan’s New York paintings.  The exhibit was scheduled to be shown at four museums from October 2007 through December 2008.  The letter was passed on to me,  the American art curator, and the museum’s registration department setting in motion a carefully documented chain of events that would lead to the departure of the painting. The IMA requires at least six months notice to process the loan of a work of art from its collection.
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Does the war in Iraq make you angry? Sick? Disgusted? Do you want the world to know exactly how you feel? Thornton Dial certainly did. Never heard of Thornton Dial? Well, that is definitely a loss I hope to remedy.

Thornton Dial is an African American artist whose work is in the southern vernacular tradition, which means he is self taught with no formal art education and lives and works in the South (Alabama to be exact.) He makes sculptures and assemblages (wall hangings with things protruding from the surface) using discarded everyday objects that would otherwise wind up in a land fill. So essentially Dial is also an environmentalist. If you look closely at his art, not too closely because there are sharp edges that can leave nasty cuts on delicate skin, you will see mattress coils, paint can lids, old shoes, used clothing, buttons, chicken wire (he is also a chicken farmer), and plastic twine. Almost nothing in the Dial household wound up in the trash. He nails objects to a very large canvas that has been attached to a board, adds enamel spray paint and covers the whole thing in Splash Zone compound, the material used to keep boats water tight.

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Welcome our newest addition to the IMA Blogger list, Harriet Warkel, Curator of American Art.

The American galleries are changing. At least a part of these spaces will look different after July 14. We are always rotating works in the galleries, sometimes reinstalling the entire galleries incorporating different pieces, and even renovating galleries by changing the position of walls and painting them different colors or repainting them the same color when they look like they need it. We are rotating, reinstalling and renovating part of the American galleries on July 14.

A work in the American Modernist section of the galleries is going out on loan and another painting is going up to replace it – this is a rotation.

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