Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

This post was written by Ben Masbaum, New Media intern.

Ben Masbaum

With this being my first blog for the IMA, I implore you to scroll away if you consider yourself one of those people who doesn’t particularly hold noobies in high regard. If you’ve stuck around, allow me to share a few thoughts on music videos as an art form.

I remember sitting in my living room when I was thirteen years old: voice cracking, flannel shirt around my waist with my combat boots on the coffee table and my mother urging me to wash my hair.  I couldn’t, of course, because I was busy watching MTV, pre-Real World and before the internet we know of today.  I would stare the wild camera effects of the music videos and think to myself, “Wow!  I love this!” It seemed easy to do and I wanted to be a part of it.

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I have the incredible privilege of spending four weeks at the American Academy in Rome as an Affiliate Fellow, representing the IMA. From time to time I hope to post some of my adventures and discoveries here. What a ride!

For me, life at the Academy settled into a rhythm that included some or all of these each day:
A morning jog in the amazing park of Villa Doria Pamphili;
Catching up on IMA-related business via email;
Audio-recording interviews for my project and conscientiously downloading these to more than one storage device;
Writing a crude attempt to outline ideas about thinking, language and sensory experience triggered by the interviews; and
Visits to the AAR library on deliberate quests, sometimes spiced up by fortuitous discoveries of books related to the ideas mentioned in the previous item.

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The Pharmacy prescribes the following links to combat Monday online anemia.

Blog: Scanwiches

Jon Chonko, a New York graphic designer who has been scouring the local deli scene, has a scanwich blog for his findings, replete with delectable cross sections to satisfy your every sandwich desire. If you’re not hungry now, you’re about to be.

(via npr)

ArtBabble Video: Behind the Scenes: Tim Burton

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I simply cannot get it out of my head. This fall is absolutely beautiful – from all the great color to the nearly perfect temperatures day after day. And though I wrote on a similar topic last post I must return to the gorgeousness of things again. To not go on and on about this fall would be a double sin no doubt. It should be cold, damp, and gray by now. Leaves should be brown and fallen. Even late perennials should be finished. Tropicals should have long since been put to bed for winter. But it’s not that way at all. It’s sunny and warm out. Red and gold leaves still hang on the trees. Perennials are still flowering. Brugmansias are blooming outside my office window. It’s all wrong. But it’s so all right.

I am still digging tropicals and other non-hardies at home. If the weather had not been so great I would be in deep double-dug doo-doo. As it is, I’m sort of leisurely going along – but admittedly starting to look over my shoulder for “real” November weather. Whether it was the cooler summer or the steady rains I don’t know but many plants did extra good this year. The Amorphophallus konjac got huge. Read the rest of this entry »

I have the incredible privilege of spending four weeks at the American Academy in Rome as an Affiliate Fellow, representing the IMA. From time to time I hope to post some of my adventures and discoveries here. What a ride!

This is the project description that I sent to members of the Academy community, attached to an email inviting them to schedule an interview time with me:

3 October, 2009
Member of the Academy Community:

My name is Linda Duke and I am an Affiliate Fellow in residence at the Academy for four weeks, Sept. 28-Oct. 26, 2009. Back home, I serve as Director of Education at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. While in residence in Rome, I hope to collect from members of the Academy community descriptions of and reflections on their recent aesthetic experiences – with works of art, architecture and other design arts, gardens and thoughtfully-prepared food.

View from AAR balcony

Volunteers will be invited to speak or write about whichever experiences they choose and may participate as many times as they wish. There are precedents for using language as a window into the types of thinking that are engaged (see below). In this project, it will be important to capture participants’ actual words, via audio recording or in written form. My interest is in examining what commonalities of critical and aesthetic thought might be found across the domains of art, design and culinary art. Read the rest of this entry »