Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

Here is a post from one of my summer interns, Lucie Alig, that speaks for itself.

My desk in the conservation lab was situated amongst Renaissance sculptures, ornately painted vases, African artifacts, and yet I was there to devote myself to one specific artwork far too large for any lab: Robert Indiana’s 1970 sculpture, LOVE. Needless to say, it is a piece that prompts a nod of recognition. Whether identifiable from its centralized positioning on the grounds of the IMA, or through its plastic incarnation as a dangling, mass-produced key chain, most everyone seems familiar with the trademark tilt of LOVE’s “O,” as it has been so hopefully interpreted to symbolize a movement forward or—in the case of my research of LOVE’s conservation history—a rather complicated stepping back.

Lucie Alig considers LOVE

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This blog post is the second written by IMA Public Affairs intern Sarah Miller. Read her first post Personal Art Appreciation. She recently earned a Master of Arts Management with a Visual Arts Concentration from Columbia College Chicago and currently works at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Illinois.

Do you have any memories related to Robert Indiana’s Love sculptures? Or Anish Kapoor’s “Bean” in Chicago? What about Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s saffron-colored gates in New York’s central park? How about one of those giant spiders by Louise Bourgeois…or those cows on parade? Did you ever take a picture with one of these or another public art work? Well, I surely have (see me below). Something about the interactive nature of public art, and the feeling that it informally exists in its spot for me, rather than for a gallery space or for someone’s wall, really helps me enjoy public art. And I think regardless of if you like a piece or don’t, it inevitably makes you aware of your space, your participation in it, and someone’s efforts to enrich or change it. As a friend recently reminded me, these works at least make you ask, “Why is this here?”

Saying hello to a Juan Munoz sculpture

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The blogs tend to concentrate on the “tubes” and the IMA’s presence in the virtual world, so I’d like to take a moment and focus everyone’s attention back on the brick & mortar museum. I have been conducting a little research on the IMA, comparing it to some sister institutions – Detroit, Minneapolis, Cleveland, and St. Louis – and how our security department stacks up to others in operational costs and “bang for the buck.” During this research I have come to reaffirm, at least in my own mind, how unique the IMA is and how great our responsibility is to protect it.

I’ll try not to belabor the point with too many statistics, but in sheer square footage – 669,000 and change in the main building – the IMA ranks in the top ten out of about 230 other art museums. That’s a lot of square footage our security officers have to patrol each day, 24/7/365. And in that space is an art collection of roughly 54,000 pieces of art from all over the world and from all time periods.

Now, numerous other institutions have bigger buildings or more artwork, so let me add a few other amenities that the IMA has: a reference library, studio/education space, retail and dining areas, the 500-seat Deer-Zink events pavilion, and The Toby, a 600-seat theater to augment our warm-weather outdoor amphitheater.

IMA's campus and LOVE

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The IMA pharmacy prescribes the following links to combat Monday online anemia.

Whitehouse.gov – We the people have a redesign. Macon Phillips, Director of New Media for the White House,  has taken change and applied it to the Fed’s main web outlet. This slick new site has quick links to video, a new blog, and contact information. For those that don’t remember the old site, check it.

Handmade Bicycle Show – This February, Indianapolis will host an event for bike enthusiasts and artists. Bikes with an art slant? This IMA employee and bike-ist will be there for sure. Oh, and a clown holding a U-Lock is clownin’.

Inhabit.com – Check out this green-design blog and get ready for us to host, “Shaping a New Century,” a design symposium that will bring world-class designers to Indianapolis for two days in March. With “green-ness” always in mind, this IMA employee is particularly interested in this transformation.

ILoveYouMoreThanBlank – By way of the lovely Emily, comes this early Valentine’s day treat.

For those that don’t know, in one of my posts last spring I offered lunch with the IMA’s director, Max Anderson, in exchange for making a Wikipedia article about one of the IMA’s outdoor sculptures.  To make a long story short, 5 people made articles and just last week Max fulfilled his end of the bargain by having lunch with the Wikipedians at Pucks.  I joined them and so did Daniel and Despi.  The conversation was wide ranging and engaging and the lunch was good, too …. Mmm, Puck’s beet salad and flat bread.

The Wikipedians, Max, and I.

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