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.

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.

As the IMA website indicates, we have taken official possession of the Miller House and Garden in Columbus, Indiana. This will make the second National Historic Landmark property the IMA has in its collection (Oldfields-Lilly House and Gardens being the first). How’s that for bragging rights! As a practical matter however, home ownership is not all fun and games in this situation. Ahead lies a road of challenges for the staff working on MHG teams.

Columbus is an hour’s drive south of Indy, which makes it difficult to explore the house and conduct business with the current local staff. Director of Lilly House Operations Bradley Brooks, head of our team of six, has spent a lot of time on the phone and making the trek south in the run-up to taking possession of the property. He has interacted with everyone from members of the Miller family to a nephew of  Eero Saarinen. Bradley has been, and continues to be a very busy beaver.

The task of converting a residential property into a museum showcase has been an educational experience for our team, so far. It has forced us to look at all the things we do here at the museum, a lot of which we take for granted, and formulate how to adapt and transplant these practices to a former family home fifty miles away.

Chief Registrar Katie Haigh and Conservator-in-Charge David Miller (along with more staff down the road) will need to inventory, evaluate, photograph, and catalog the entire contents of the house. Katie and David are currently working with Buildings guru Bert Reader to determine what can be done with the climate control systems to best preserve the house and its contents. And don’t forget, the house itself is a piece of art–made primarily of steel, marble and glass—so David will have to develop a list of acceptable cleaning supplies, and a schedule for keeping the house spic and span. Structural drawings, building materials, maintenance records and other information on the house and other buildings on property will need to be collected and researched to assist with preservation efforts.

Bert, Safety Manager Mindy Summers and I have been looking at the safety and security needs of the house. Needless to say, there are some interesting and quirky aspects to MHG.

It’s been an Easter egg hunt at times to find some of the security devices hidden in the many nooks and crannies, and Bert has had to deal with the Complex Issues Dept. at the phone company. Who knew? In addition to proposing some upgrades to the existing security and fire systems, we have met with Columbus fire and police personnel to discuss access issues and response procedures to ensure smooth cooperation with local agencies.

Mindy and I will take our existing procedures from the IMA, such as access lists, on-call lists and key control, and adjust them to fit the Miller House environment. We will eventually have to add other safety procedures, such as a disaster plan and a hazardous chemical inventory, to the many books that will reside at the house. After the house is reconfigured to our satisfaction (or budget limits), we will determine staffing levels, work schedules, the inventory process, lockdown procedures and other security duties to be performed.

In the meantime, Director Max Anderson, Sr. Curator of Design Arts R. Craig Miller, Director of Environmental and Historic Preservation Mark Zelonis and others will devise the plan for how to present the house to the public.

The to-do list is endless, but having another landmark property like the Miller House adds a huge feather to the IMA’s cap and broadens the art experience that we can offer to our visitors.