We challenged America to submit to be the IMA’s next top blogger and America answered.  Over the course of the next month, we’ll post the finalists in the IMA’s “So You Think You Can Blog” contest. After we’ve posted all five entries, we’ll let our blog readers vote for the winner. This week: Meet Heather McAlister.

Name: Heather McAlister, but you may call me Diva.  All my friends do, so why should you be any different?

Tell us a little about yourself.

I was born on a cold January day in 19—oops; I don’t think you really want my life history, right? I’ll just give you the highlights.   I’m a 30-something who has lived in Indianapolis for nearly 13 years.  I work for a large International non-profit organization where I develop, implement, and deploy leadership and educational materials. This really means I think up creative ways to educate those who serve the organization and inspire them to be great leaders.   The members then send me emails or call to say either A.) They love the materials I’ve created, it’s the best stuff they have ever seen, and I’m a genius or B.) They tell me what I’ve written is useless and how could I dare change something that was obviously already perfect and they can’t believe I didn’t consult them when I considered a rewrite.

I’ve learned I am either loved or hated for my work, but you can’t win them all and I need to support my Starbucks habit somehow.   Prior to my foray into the non-profit world, I was a teacher for 11 years.  Most of the time I loved it, but then, I started to love it less and less.  It’s sort of akin to a relationship.  You know you love the person, but you soon realize even love won’t keep you from wanting to beat them senseless with a cast-iron skillet when they do things that annoy you and no matter how hard you try, you just can’t ignore them.  I think I stayed as long as I did because I always had an excuse to buy new crayons and markers in August.  Yes, I went into teaching because I love the smell of new crayons and freshly sharpened pencils.    I’m creative—I paint pottery and make greeting cards.  I sing in the church choir.  I am training for my second Mini Marathon—mostly to see if maybe this year I don’t lose four toenails.

I’m also addicted to Facebook, Twitter, Starbucks Hot Chocolate (Ho Cho in Diva World), and my iPhone.   Eventually, I would love to write full time.  I aspire to be best friends with Jen Lancaster, author of Bitter is the New Black, so we can sit around and snark on people, write about it and get paid.  Until that time comes, I’ll keep my comments to myself and occasionally my Facebook page because really, how does anyone expect me to keep all of this in all the time?  I can only keep my ADHD tendencies under control for so long before it all just comes gushing out. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Guest Bloggers, Marketing, Musings

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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Filed under: Art, Conservation, Guest Bloggers

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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Filed under: Art, Local, Musings

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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Filed under: Protection Services

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.

Filed under: Art, Current Events, New Media, Technology