Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

Tradition dictates that January 1st marks the beginning of each new year. A new year that brings opportunity for a fresh start.

For me though, the new year and ensuing opportunity for a fresh start occurs about this time every year. I always look forward to the end of August, because that is when the onslaught begins.

That is when super size fashion magazines featuring the latest trends for fall begin to flood my mailbox. I remain giddy for about a week, knowing that at least one brand new, beefy, fall fashion issue will be waiting for me when I get home.

I truly look forward to studying each page (even the ads) for inspiration on ways to update my wardrobe. As I open every cover, I begin to formulate a plan for ways to revamp my current clothing and identify key pieces to purchase- - all in an effort to start fresh.
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If you have been keeping up with the Nugget Factory these days you know that Daniel and I endured many hours of travel to arrive in balmy Singapore where we attended the 2008 International Symposium on Electronic Arts.

The time we spent was filled with sessions, preparing for our own presentation, keeping up with IMA work and seeing what the city had to offer.  We did a lot of everything despite the inevitable jetlag.  A 12 hour time difference is a doozie.

Nonetheless, we made the most of it.  Of all the sessions we attended I found the last one to be the most compelling.  It was a lecture by Khairul Azril Ismail called Pudu Jail’s Graffiti: Aesthetics Beyond the Walls of the Prison Cells.

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Both Thomas Jefferson (The Declaration of Independence) and Trey Parker (Team America: World Police) have said it in so many words: Freedom isn’t free.

Ask IMA CEO Maxwell Anderson about the price of freedom. He’ll tell you about the IMA’s successful challenge to a law passed by the Indiana legislature this year forcing any entity selling materials deemed “harmful to minors” to register with the State and pay a fee to do so. If Judge Sarah Evans Barker had not agreed with the IMA, Big Hat Books, and other plaintiffs and struck down the restrictive law, every school with a sex ed text book—or art museum gift shop with books featuring the nude form—would have had to pay up and be policed.

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One thing that I find interesting about writing for this blog is that I really have no idea what or even who is going to proceed or follow me. I get a date on the calendar that my post is going to go up, and that’s about it. So I was surprised to find out that Meg was so very interested in crunching numbers because today I’m writing about how I take care of our “Numbers 0-9,” by Robert Indiana. A marketing ploy, serendipity, coincidence, or the pervasiveness of numerality: you decide.

Anyway, I’m going to tell you how I help to keep our numbers clean and looking good (I get lots of help). For the past few years I’ve invited IMA summer interns working in other departments to help me and the conservation interns wash the “Numbers” (you can go here to Flickr to see a ton of images of our sculptures and Indiana’s various versions of the same sculpture on exhibit around the world).

Washing these 8 foot tall painted aluminum artworks is a fair amount of work, even when you have the good help I had. It’s a fairly straight-forward process to clean the sculptures: we simply wash them gently with soap (I use Orvus ) and water. Really, that’s it, some soap and water, a few ladders and lots of me acting like Mr. Miyagi and demanding perfect motions when doing the work.

Beyond the actual work it’s also a time when I can provide a real example of some of the maintenance we complete on the outdoor sculptures to interns in the other departments. After all (and this number is for Meg), there are over 50 artworks scattered throughout the IMA’s grounds, and soon to be a lot more over in the 100 Acres.

There are two other things that I wanted to mention, one is that you can go here and see a drawing by Robert Indiana that shows what the organization of the numbers meant to him and why we arranged them so. I’m always intrigued by this notion that just by putting two numbers together you can achieve a kind off greater meaning.
The second thing I wanted to mention is the fine Wikipedia article that Jasmine made about the numbers this spring. I have it on good word that invitations for Lunch with the IMA’s director have been sent out to the 5 that made Wikipedia articles of IMA sculptures. I’ve been digging around to see if others have been made, but haven’t found any. Speaking of that, I hope our IT department doesn’t check how many times a day I look at Wikipedia on this computer….

I’m a number geek. Give me a calculator and a list of digits, and I’ll be happy for hours. If using the calculator was an Olympic sport, I might be a contender for the gold. I’ve got lightening fast fingers and my addition button is wearing out from all the use it gets. From attendance to web stats, revenue to ROI, I’ve been crunching numbers like Michael Phelps breaks world records.

As numbers twirl around my head like 10-year old Chinese gymnasts (they are definitely NOT 16 that’s for sure), I thought I’d share with you some of my favorites. You can find a lot of these stats on the IMA’s dashboard, but some of the numbers are not accessible to the public…until now. In the Museum’s ongoing dedication to full transparency, here’s IMA by the numbers: Read the rest of this entry »