If the calendar isn’t sufficient to let you know we are close to Christmas, then the weather should give you a clue. Apparently, nature decided all those above normal temperatures needed to be balanced by some below normal temperatures. Then, just to drive the point home, there was the dusting of snow.

But the cold temperatures aren’t all bad. It’s a great excuse for finding some inside activities after you spend some time outside. For instance, we just finished picking up the lumanaria from last night’s Open House (there is another the 16th) so it is good to be back inside. We got the wreaths and lights up a couple weeks ago when it was pretty good weather.

But enough about me for the moment, what about you? Say for instance you come over to the IMA and walk about the gardens or 100 Acres, then, to warm up, you drop in at the Lilly House to experience Christmas at Lilly. Bradley has outdone all previous years of decorating for the season, in my opinion. This is my favorite of all the ones I can remember. Okay, it is true, I don’t remember that many of them. But this is still my favorite. Here are afew highlights you will find:

The mirror at the top of the entrance stairs has been transformed into a lovely winter scene using construction paper. It’s amazing. The mirror shows through where the windows of the buildings are along with the moon.

It would be reasonably simple to do at home. Maybe start with a small project (bigger than a compact) before you get to that huge mirror over the sofa.

The various arrangements are appropriately sparkly.

Love this green based one.

Nothing, and I do mean nothing, says classy elegant décor like a bowl full of shiny sparkly balls. Anybody can do this and always look like a professional decorator.

I like these three tiered plant stands as well.

The Calamondin oranges have been replaced by ‘Meyer’ lemons this year. The glossy foliage looks great and seasonably appropriate.

There are a few fruits but you could hang faux-lemon ornaments on instead or to enhance.

But my absolute favorite room is the dining room. I stepped into this room and I just became weak in the knees. I’d never seen anything so scrumptiously elegant and gaudy at the same time.

I love blue and silver and white for Christmas and this room’s blue paint pretty much demands that color scheme. The touch of purple just makes everything pop. And the paper bells. Oh my gosh. The paper bells. I love them most of all.

They make the room all Christmasy and June-wedding at the same time. I told Bradley that if I got married this winter I wanted it to be right here in this room. And for the record, he agreed to hosting it there. I think it would be the most glorious place to profess your love before one and all.

Of course you can’t think about getting married without thinking of a song about getting married. And you can’t think about  a song about getting married without thinking about “I’m Getting Married in the Morning”. And you can’t think about “I’m Getting Married in the Morning” without thinking about Lypsinka…

I’d be horribly remiss in not mentioning the other toasty spot to find some respite – our Madeline F. Elder Greenhouse. The plants are gorgeous, the air tropical, the shop welcoming. It’s a great place to warm up before heading home or out for another stroll.

The Monon & The White River

What better place to start than at the Monon trail White River overlook? This is on the first leg of my ride, as I’m warming up.

The Monon & The Canal Towpath

Not too long after that, I turn off of the Monon and start riding down the Canal Towpath. I usually have to be ready to dodge the dozens of ducks and geese that are sleepily wandering about, but I didn’t see many today.

Broad Ripple on the canal

Broad Ripple is also looking pretty sleepy at this point in the morning. Up past this bridge is the blue bridge that crosses the canal next to College. After crossing at the light there, the towpath turns into a gravelly surface (which had puddles this morning) and continues on the south bank of the canal.

Towpath Canal Crossing

This the view from the bridge where the towpath crosses back over to the north side of the canal. We’re getting close to Butler now.

Canal Near Hinkle Fieldhouse

Here’s the sun coming up over Hinkle Fieldhouse. Great game last night, Bulldogs! I sometimes see athletes running across this bridge and down the towpath… maybe I’ve seen some of the guys on the team and didn’t even know it!

Canal near The Christian Theological Seminary

Here’s another bridge where you can see the Christian Theological Seminary in the distance. I’ve been inside and I can report that they have a very impressive organ.

Canal near 100 Acres

A little later on there’s a wooden bridge that goes underneath the Michigan street bridge. The 100 Acres Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park is just to the right of the trail up ahead. At this point, though, I’m headed to the museum, so I turn around at the end of the bridge and head up the ramp to Michigan street.

Michigan Street & The White River

This isn’t technically on my ride, but just a little north of the ramp up to Michigan is the bridge that crosses over the White River. As the river bends to the right in the distance its passing by 100 Acres, forming the northern border.

42nd Street Gate

Okay, this one isn’t a bridge or a waterway, but it’s an important landmark. This is the gate at Michigan and 42nd street, which is a nice entry point for bikers.

Woodstock Bridge

This is a little bridge just inside the gate that’s on a road called Woodstock according to Google Maps. You can see Lilly House to the right and the entryway to The Orchard on the left. The greenhouse is also on the right.

Front Lawn at the IMA

I like to ride around to the front of the museum for this view. And now it’s time to get to work!

I am not a big fan of winter as those of you who are regular readers know. But I do appreciate it. I like snow for instance, when it is not on the roads. I wouldn’t mind it on the roads if there were fewer other drivers sharing those roads. And this winter hasn’t really been all that bad. Colder than normal but not bitter. Plenty of snow but not the 50 inches my friend Avonell got in one week in Maryland. Gray days but enough sunny ones in between that you don’t forget what that heat-making yellow orb in the sky is. Not bad.

The heavy wet snow of a couple weeks back did create some problems with our junipers in front of the Lilly House. The narrow Juniperus virginiana ‘Hillspire’ just couldn’t handle that much weight on them. Two of them went pretty much flat.

What do you do? Get the snow load off, push them back up, and tie them in place. Will they recover? Hopefully. But the root ball raised up pretty high on one.

They are near the end of their landscape lifetime having grown to the point they are near the eaves of the house. The plants are getting out of scale. We need a couple years ideally for their replacements growing in the nursery to reach their proper size. If the replacements are too short they look just as ridiculous as the originals being too tall.

Switch grass ( Panicum virgatum)is one of our best native grasses for the landscape. Most years they stay upright all winter even with snow, rain, and wind. Not so much this year. Here’s some of the ‘Dallas Blues’ along 38th street.

Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ ( feather reed grass) is one of the best landscape grasses period. I like its narrow upright form demonstrated by only a few of the plants in this bed inside the 38th street entrance.

But something interesting that happened in that same snow involved the hydrangeas, in particular H. paniculata and arborescens. I thought the dried flower heads would collect so much snow they would break off. Not true. Here is H. paniculata ‘Tardiva’ followed by H. arborescens ssp. radiata ‘Samantha’, both still holding their heads high.

Hardscapes look good in snow as a rule. Here the beautiful stonework of the Overlook is accented with a layer of soft white.

And these three containers on the Overlook patio make me think of store-bought cupcakes with a heavy layer of frosting or a collection of pies with a thick layer of fluffy meringue (everything goes back to food it seems).

This bright spot in the Northeast Border Garden is my favorite twig dogwood, Cornus sanguiniea ‘Midwinter Fire. I’m not bothered by winter at all when viewing something this beautiful.

So enjoy these winter days as best you can. They don’t actually last forever. We horticulturists and gardeners know spring will return and once again we will be flat out busy with our plants from dawn to dusk.

Empty Billboard

As I’ve been writing the IMA’s 2010 marketing campaign, I’ve been trying to find ways to communicate the value of the museum experience. The IMA has a tremendous amount to offer the public: educational programs that range from films to horticulture classes, collections and exhibitions that span the scope of art history, 2 historic house museums (Lilly House and Miller House), ArtBabble and a bunch of other cool online initiatives,152 acres of gardens and grounds…The list is long, and well, that’s the blessing and the curse of marketing the IMA. It’s the breadth of offerings that makes it hard to distill the IMA experience into a sound bite or tag line for radio, tv, billboards and various other media channels.

I don’t think this is an IMA problem. In general, museums struggle to define the value of what they do to the average community member. Why would someone who has never been to an art museum before and who has no experience with art suddenly choose to visit? What can the museum provide to them? The benefits of a museum experience are complicated and personal. They depend on a myriad of factors, including expectations of visitor, fulfillment of expectations in previous museum trips, personal history, context, mood, etc. What one person may love about the museum, another may hate. What one visitor thinks or feels in front of a work of art, another may never know.

Often I wish I could put my personal reasons for loving museums on a billboard. I’d love to be able to tell folks about the time I walked into a gallery in the British Museum, saw the Parthenon Sculptures, and was moved to sobbing tears. I would like to tell them about a piece in the Denver Art Museum by an artist named Sean Landers that taught me about becoming an adult. I’d love to tell visitors that I don’t understand a lot of contemporary art, and that it’s ok that I’m confused by it. I’d also like to share that sometimes I go into the IMA’s American Galleries, sit in front of a portrait and make up a story about the life of the person in the painting. All of these things create my personal value of the museum experience.

While I know I’m not alone in some of my feelings, I’m certain that the “Meg-tested, Meg-approved” campaign I often dream about  is  NOT going to work. (Though my mom may think otherwise.) So, as I continue to work on the 2010 marketing campaign, I’d like to throw a bit of the thinking out to the group. Why do you visit museums? What is the value of the IMA? I have my answers, but I’d love to hear yours…

By the way, I just wanted to thank Nina Simon and her recent blog on Museum2.0. I found it helpful as part of this process. You may as well.

Audience at The Toby

We have a lot to offer at the IMA: permanent galleries, Lilly House, 152 acres of gardens and grounds, exhibitions, public programs, web projects, and community outreach. After a while, it’s easy to take for granted all of the ways that the museum serves its mission. Every week I write ads, print pieces, Facebook updates, and blogs that focus on the opportunities for visitors at the IMA, but I often don’t take advantage of them myself.

Just 30 seconds from where I sit, I have an amazingly impressive collection of the world’s art, and I rarely take the time to see it. I’m not sure if it’s my hectic schedule or laziness, but it’s shameful to me how little time I spend in the galleries or at the IMA’s public programs. As a marketer, I spend my day encouraging others to experience the IMA, but I wouldn’t be doing my job well unless I do it myself. Therefore, I have recently decided to attend two public programs each month and spend at least 30 minutes in the galleries each week. It’s still not enough, but it’s a start.

As part of my personal mission to experience the museum, a week ago Sunday, I attended an event at The Toby. On November 1, the IMA hosted the string quartet Osso, the singer-songwriter DM Stith as well as Sufjan Stevens and his film, The BQE. The eclectic event entertained a sold-out crowd of 600. As I sat in the balcony of the theater next to a 16-year-old hipster in buffalo check plaid, skinny jeans and black framed glasses, my heart swelled. He and his fellow high school friends were completely engaged in the experience. They were giddy with delight. (In a cool, hipster sort of way, of course.)

DM Stith on stage at The Toby

I loved the event, because Osso was the most bad@ss string quartet that I’ve ever seen perform. I loved the event, because DM Stith has a hauntingly gorgeous voice. I loved the event because The BQE was a devastatingly beautiful film. But, most of all, I loved the event because everyone else loved the event.

As a marketer, I often focus on the cause. “What will make a person attend the Museum?” But not often enough do I focus on the effect. “What happens when a person attends the Museum?” Attending public programs, walking through the galleries, and experiencing the IMA as a visitor are all critical to doing my job well. By taking time to enjoy the mission of what I do, I am better able to serve it.

So, with all that said, I have a challenge to my colleagues in the field – not just marketers, but registrars, curators, designers, IT specialists, and accountants. EXPERIENCE YOUR MUSEUM. Don’t take for granted that you work at an amazing place. Be amazed by the place at which you work.

It’s hard, I know. We have all have priorities that pull us away, but I implore you to take the time. For just a little while each week, stop working and start experiencing. I guarantee you, it’s worth it – and I’m not just saying that because I work in marketing.

Ed first witnessed the site decades ago while on a work assignment in Columbus.  He was then only able to peek through the already tall arborvitae hedges guarding the property’s east side, but knew the place was indeed very special.  After all, one of the 20th century’s masters of landscape design, Dan Kiley, had worked his magic here.  For all of us in the field, this is a place for reverence.

Miller House, summer 2009 (Ed Blake and Bradley Brooks on far right)

My own first encounter with Miller House and Garden was very similar, taking place on May 1st of 2007 as part of a charrette involving Miller family members and architects, landscape architects, and preservationists from around the country.  We all assembled to discuss the many attributes of the property and who might be the best stewards of the site in the future.  Part of the weekend’s program was a visit to Miller House with an insider’s tour of both home and landscape with the Miller children.

The weather on that mid-spring day couldn’t have been nicer.  A clear blue sky was the perfect complement to the lush pink blooms of the large saucer magnolias framing each side of the house.  Though some in the group had visited before, many of us knew the site only from photographs, articles, and monographs on the designers involved.  This truly was a special treat – to witness this mid-century marvel and examine it in such detail, with members of the Miller family sharing their own experiences of growing up here.  Quite a privilege, I think, for them to call this home, and for us as well to hear about that experience directly.

Magnolias at Miller House

Over the ensuing months, the IMA continued to conduct further research on the property and its three principal designers – Eero Saarinen, Alexander Girard, and Dan Kiley – to help us better understand how this place came to be and how much influence Mr. & Mrs. Miller had on its outcome.  We were, of course, elated to be the recipient of the Miller family’s generous bequest of the property and funds for an endowment.  And by pure coincidence, the transfer of the property came on May 1st of 2009, exactly two years to the day since we first laid eyes upon it.  Those same magnolias were blooming brightly once again in honor of the event.

But this just begins our serious work on the property, bringing the home, its interiors and furnishings, and its landscape into a form approximating their earlier condition.  We have a goal of opening the estate to the public two years from now.  Research in Columbus and at repositories of archived material at sites around the country will occupy the time of Bradley, Craig Miller, and me, as well as many others as we further the process of understanding this important treasure.  We’re so grateful to be able to add Miller House and Garden as another National Historic Landmark (Oldfields being the other) to the IMA’s array of historic offerings.  I invite you to stay tuned for more details on our progress.

Lilly House at the IMA

Interior view of Lilly House

The Miller House and Garden crept into my awareness at some time while Oldfields had my full attention.  I don’t remember when I first learned of it, but I remember distinctly two things about the impression I had.  It was an extraordinarily beautiful and important property, and it was difficult to gain access to it.  Visiting lecturers or groups might sometimes make requests to see the property, but it was rare that we could accommodate them.  The Miller House and Garden seemed remote and mysterious.  In the meantime, I still had plenty to occupy me with Oldfields.  I rarely thought about the home in Columbus.

When I first saw the Miller House and Garden in April of 2007, the situation was entirely different from seeing Oldfields in 2000.  The Lilly family had been gone from Oldfields for over 30 years, during which the IMA changed and adapted its use of the house, the interiors drifting away from their domestic appearance all the while.  By 2000, it conveyed little impression of being a home.  By contrast, Mrs. Miller was still living in her home when I visited for the first time.  Having been the Millers’ home for almost exactly 50 years at that time, it possessed all the communicative power that came from being the undisturbed repository of family possessions.  A sizeable group made the visit that day, so the conditions for viewing were less than ideal.  Even with the distractions of people milling about and chattering, the house’s impact was striking.  Striking for the qualities of light and space, for the luxurious materials modestly used, for the kinds of objects in the house, but perhaps most of all for the owners’ personalities that the objects hinted at.

At Miller House, looking over floor plans

The landscape, designed by Dan Kiley, was another revelation.   Nothing I had seen prepared me for it, for its beautifully direct use of formal design elements – line, mass, and color – and for its elegant contrasts between the most basic of landscape elements:  light and shade, stone and turf, enclosure and openness, higher and lower elevation, close and distant perspectives.

Miller House in Columbus, IN

Two years later, I am still processing my response the property.  I’m not sure how much the property is continuing to reveal itself to me and how much may be due to a growing ability to apprehend and appreciate.  Now we are planning for the approach we will take to interpret the Miller House and Garden.  Once again, an experience to savor.

Rather instead, we got out in the Ravine Garden to do some pruning on everything from junipers to shrub roses to crabapples. It was still a bit on the cold side when kneeling in snow. And we had to be careful about walking up and down the steps as they are still snow and ice covered. All in all though, it was nice to be able to get outside and do some gardening. Not that I have all my “inside” work finished.

I have spent time finalizing my picks for the cutting garden this week. I grow a good many of the annuals myself. It’s just not feasible for our suppliers to grow one or two flats of some plant or another. And it would cost considerably more than our budget would allow even when times were good. And if I don’t plant them myself how will I learn the proper methods involved in starting the plants? I shouldn’t keep saying “my” and “I” so much. It’s usually a cooperative effort. But the cutting garden is mine and if we have crop failure it really is my responsibility to correct things. This year Geoff will have a wide range of vegetables he will be starting from seed for the Orchard. It will be good to have vegetables growing here again. We will talk about that more later.

I order most of my seed from wholesale sources which helps to keep the cost down. That also means I get fairly large quantities at times which isn’t a problem. It’s important to remember most seed can be held for 2 or 3 years without any serious loss of germination percentages. Yes, I know some are very short-lived and some are viable for a thousand years, but please, I’m talking in general terms here. Go get your own damn soapbox. Now where was I? Oh yea, seeds. When you have leftover seed just do your best to store them dry and cool. I don’t go so far as refrigeration. But I do think it is a good idea to put them in a container you can seal pretty tight. It can me glass, metal, or plastic. Keep it out of the sun and somewhere the temperatures don’t swing wildly. It’s really not complicated. Some seeds will always be good and some won’t. No big deal.

I’m trying a new dahlia from seed this year called ‘Black Beauty’. I really like the very dark flowers. They look great with bright colors and especially, green flowers. I think an arrangement of ‘Black Beauty’ with yellow-green Zinnia elegans ‘Envy’ and the hot orange of the plumed cockscomb Celosia argentea ‘Fresh Look Orange’ would be great.

It would also look great with pinks like Celosia ‘Cramer’s Rose’.

Amaranths are another staple of my cutting garden here at the IMA. New this year will be Amaranthus ‘Cramer’s Amazon’ (Ralph Cramer has done a lot for cut flowers). This one has hot magenta flowers and just as important, purple/burgundy and green leaves. I never seem to have enough foliage for the arrangers and this looks like a good candidate. I can start using it even before it flowers. I’m a little concerned that the one image I found on the web isn’t quite as nice as the one in the catalogue. Imagine that.

The cutting garden is somewhat time-consuming. It takes awhile to get everything planted then there is all the usual weeding and watering and general maintenance plus the several hours a week spent cutting. But I love the experimenting with new species and cultivars (some move out of the cutting garden into the landscape). And it’s so rewarding when we can pick a whole Toro bed-full to take to the Lilly House.

Ah Summer, I miss you so in winter.

Developed for IMA's American Galleries in 2005

Rewind a few years.  Does anyone remember the American Gallery handheld project – ArtXplore – that the IMA piloted in 2005?  It was a short-lived project that helped (indirectly)shape much of the current technology strategies at IMA.  It was a difficult project, with some victories, lessons learned and a big part of the technology, evolutionary process at our museum.  Since 2005, we have re-focused our efforts to create digital content that visitors in any location can access. Although we do offer audio tours at the Lilly House, a cell phone tour for the Gardens and Grounds – our primary strategy has to increase the reputation of IMA globally, and share our stories about art with a much larger online audience.  It’s an approach I support, but with the opening of the Art and Nature Park next year, should we try another attempt with some sort of handheld device?  Perhaps.
Information on From Audiotours to iPhones Workshop, case studies, speaker bios, flickr images, you name it, can be found HERE.  It is an amazing basket of information, applicable to anyone interested in the ways museums operate.  The conference represented some of the most innovation and brightest minds working in museums today – excluding myself of course.

You really should visit this wiki!

The workshop featured tales of success, failure and the in between.  It highlighted the brilliant tours created with Antenna Audio/Discovery Communications at Tate Modern and SFMoMA.  It showcased the many devices possible – custom devices, iPod’s, iPhones, PSP’s, Nintendo DS and more.  It delved into the ways information is sent to a device – GPS, infrared, WAP, RFID and OTHER options.  It showed what the biggest and smallest museums are capable of creating, innovating and overcoming.  And it brought out the personalities of these museums – a paleontologist experimenting with different approaches to the visitor experience, a one-person department from the San Jose Museum of Art, and many of the up and coming museums that will soon be influencing and leading the arena of museum technology.

I was honored to be at the Tate Modern, sit on one of the panel discussions, rub elbows with insightful and brilliant colleagues, but most importantly, eager and motivated to create something new at the IMA.

You’ll have to wait and see.

From the outset, there was a lot to consider for this show. Start for example with the fact that we don’t usually put artwork on the museum’s floor (well, unless it is a floor, like Do-Ho Suh’s, then we do). And I don’t think we’ve ever exhibited any contemporary art in the dining room of the Lilly House. Adrian installed one of his paintings right next to the dinning room table. Taking inspiration from the Kalm Report I made this video to show you how to find it (mind you, I had the artist’s permission to do this).

Museums tend to hang artworks on walls or put them on pedestals or risers, so this show required some extra thought and a lot of trust that you, the IMA patron, wouldn’t just go and walk all over the panels and do serious damage. Thanks, by the way, for not doing that; I would know, too, because I’m the guy that goes around every week or so to dust and look after these pieces. (On a side note, I do know that people occasionally like to cough and sneeze when standing over Adrian’s paintings; I’ll let you put the rest of that puzzle together, but rest assured I gently remove this “residue”).

It would be simplistic to say that Adrian just came here and put his paintings in the galleries, had an engaging conversation with Claire Schneider, and then left. No, he too had to work pretty hard to precisely install each one of his panels into the specific locations.

If you haven’t done so already, you should go through the exhibition with the free audio tour and hear the discussion about the decisions that came into play during each installation location; or check out Rebecca’s on-line essay; or better yet buy the IMA exhibition catalogue, “Elusive,” in the gift shop, which through some irony I don’t really understand is also available at Wal*Mart.com. Also, Scott Grow over at onthecusp.org completed an in-depth interview with Adrian.

In addition to making sure we got the works installed in a way that fit Adrian’s ideas, we also took the time to consider the long-term preservation concerns related to these pieces, in the event the IMA were to make an acquisition (you never know).

Here are a few of the larger concepts that we discussed with Adrian, and then later recorded by video in an “Artist Interview,” which will be stored in the IMA’s historical files. First, though, it helps if you play out this scenario: It’s 100 years from now and nobody is around that was here during this installation (sure, it’s a bit morbid, but it helps). So,

• How would we successfully re-install these artworks “correctly”?
• Who would be making the decisions about their installation and positioning?
• Which ones could be leaned against a wall, and which ones must remain flat.
• Could we exhibit them at the Lilly House again?
• What happens if one gets damaged?
• How could it be repaired?

While it’s rather difficult to quantify all of the subjective decisions that went into installing these artworks, both Rebecca and I are confident that the documents that we created would help future IMA employees install these work in a way that correctly fits Adrian’s intentions.

If you want to see the Adrian Schiess before it closes, you’d better hurry. It ends on May 4, and then we’ll de-install the paintings from the gallery, pack them up, and then ship them back to Switzerland.