Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

In an effort to visually portray my predictions for marketing the arts in 2009, and to solicit ideas, I’m leaving the rest of this post blank.

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Some tigers are saber-toothed and stuffed; others are rendered in chrome. Two museums brought me closer to wildness this summer: the Indiana State Museum’s Footprints exhibition and the new Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, WI.

At the ISM, Footprints features taxidermy to die for. In an exploration of the natural history of what is today Indiana, stuffed ice age sabertooths cavort with stuffed otters, owls, fish and badgers, arranged in an unintentionally surreal tableau. This is installation art if I’ve ever seen it: a barrage of lives that were, juxtaposed for maximum emotional impact. Later in the show, there are piercing black-and-white photos of Indiana’s hunting history. The eyes of the hunters and their giddy hounds smolder with pride in front a wall of raccoon skins, circa 1935. Footprints has a high haunt factor.

The Harley-Davidson Museum, on the other hand, is pure exaltation. This cathedral to industrial design and American capitalism opened just this month after a multi-year planning process. Read the rest of this entry »

So, a few months ago, I wrote a blog listing my “art crushes.” From art critics to museum directors, I bared my soul to the arts world. Michael Kimmelman, Tyler Green, Will Gompertz, Kathy Halbreich, and Phillippe de Montebello, I still love you all, but I’m afraid I’ve forever ruined my chances of being cool. It’s pretty difficult looking hip when you’re admitting you’ve got a massive crush on the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. So this summer, I’m making an attempt to overcome my innate dorkiness. I’m going to spend the next few months visiting some of the hippest museums in the US. Here’s my plan to stay cool this summer.

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