Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

It’s Memorial Day weekend and everyone in Indianapolis knows what that means…It’s time for the THE GREATEST SPECTACLE IN RACING! For as long as I can remember the Indianapolis 500 has been somewhat of a sacred tradition in my family. If the weather is above 55 degrees and it isn’t raining, my dad will turn on the race broadcast and pull into the driveway every car and/or lawn mower he can find. And so the annual race-day car wash begins. With the broadcast blaring so loud you can hear it for at least a half mile, the rest of the family (and neighborhood) is forced to listen. I won’t complain. I love the broadcast. The bellow of Jim Neighbors singing the line “Back home again in Indiana” gives me goosebumps. The first roar of the engines makes my adrenaline rush.

While many people stay at home and listen to the radio, hundreds of thousands more pour into the track every year as spectators. As the largest and highest-capacity sporting facility in history, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway can hold more than 400,000 fans. That means in one day the track gets as many visitors as the IMA does in an entire year. That’s amazing!

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I’ve been reading the same book for 2 years. Yep, that’s right. I may have all kinds of other commitment issues in my life, but when it comes to books, I’m in it for the long haul. Sure I’ve read other books along the way. Books that are way more entertaining. Books that are a lot more interesting. But I’m devoted to Art in Theory: 1900-2000, An Anthology of Changing Ideas and I’m not going to stop until I’ve read every page.

Let me state for the record that a page in this book is like 20 pages in any other. It’s dense. Really dense. Check out this quote from page 817: “The articulation of Structuralism and semiotics to a Lacanian psychoanalysis wherin the human subject was understood as formed in the play of gender difference contained far-reaching implications for the avant-garde.” Huh? Try reading that before bedtime. Rather than Chamomile Tea or sleeping pills, Art in Theory is what I use when I have insomnia. I labor through 2 pages and I’m exhausted.

I know I sound like I’m complaining, but I’m not. I love this book. I love all 1376 pages. I love it because I am a self-proclaimed art geek, and this is the book for art geeks. It tells the story of 20th-century art from the first-hand perspectives of artists, critics and philosophers. It’s not distilled down art history in some art appreciation text book. This is art history straight from the horse’s mouth. From Sigmund Freud to Donald Judd, there’s a little something for everyone and a whole heck of a lot just for me!

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