We have spent some time on-site, working in the U.S. Pavilion and the Giardini as it prepares for an influx of visitors, filming the Commissioner, the IMA’s Lisa Freiman, as she gave an orientation to a group of interns who will tend to the Pavilion during the 6 month run of the show, and shooting the last of the artwork being installed and rehearsed (we can’t show you yet!) with Jennifer and Guillermo (that is, Allora & Calzadilla) looking on. We are working in tandem with photographers Tascha Horowitz, of the IMA, and Andrew Bordwin and Nick D’Emilio, of Andrew Bordwin Studio Inc., to document everything as it happens. We will be releasing more images and video online in the next few weeks, and you can look for the Gloria catalogue to come out later this summer.

Lisa Freiman discussing the exhibition with the summer interns.

Allora & Calzadilla watching the rehearsals.

We have also been gathering b-roll around Venice. We see the bright red Biennale advertising in every campo (they also provide the only benches in the square- smart!) We stopped in Piazza San Marco, took a quick tour of the Teatro la Fenice and hopped over the Ponte Accademia to visit Santa Maria della Salute. While the city is famously difficult to navigate, we have been able to find a lot of the famous attractions to shoot without much trouble and have been enjoying our share of Italian food and gelato.

We will continue to film as the Biennale opens this week, including VIP tours and vernissage celebrations, and you can look for almost everything we shoot to go up on the Biennale microsite. Also don’t forget to follow us on twitter @USPavilion11 for all the latest news from the Pavilion. As the Italians say- ciao!

• Throngs of museum security guards donate hair to Locks of Love
• IMA race car art
• Indianapolis Zoo’s Naturally Inspired Paint Out: My favorite elephant
• Banana Republic’s 2008 ad campaign “The Art of Style: Captured Through Photography”
• Blogger Swap 2010 call out
• My senior thesis and why I believed new media was ruining the culture of Bhutan
• Current state of the art market with an insider’s look from Sotheby’s Institute of Art professors
• Corporate art in Indianapolis- What’s really hanging on the walls at Eli Lilly headquarters?
• The Plaster Belly Trend: 3 Dimensional replicas of pregnancy (only $24.99)
• How to get on the roof of the IMA, an in-depth investigation of the IMA Nuggets

• The girl behind the Upland Brewing Co. Twitterfeed and the cool green key chains she gave away at Bloggers Anonymous
• Micro-donations on the Blog. NPR does it well.
• My life changing experience with Tara Donovan at the Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati
• Following up with Indianapolis City Ballet: What’s next?
• “Synchronous Object for One Flat Thing, reproduced” Web site: Visualizing choreographic information in new ways
• Why people don’t buy art: A recap of OnTheCusp.org’s summer 2009 survey results
• Wilber takes on the Indianapolis Cultural Trail
• The life of a content migrator and why I love/hate wiki
• The making of an IMA Magazine cover (link coming soon)
• IDADA: The Year Ahead
• Sacred Spain: TAP tour survey trends, How did you rate the TAP experience?
• moosh in indy. -The coolest mommy blogger I know

Thank you for reading!

Okay, what kind of blogger or marketer would I be if I actually did that? Recently, I’ve been pondering the possibilities so-to-speak. After reading Richard’s insightful post on the use of Twitter in museum conservation and then spotting Nick Brien’s article, Strategic Thinking 3.0, in ADWEEK, my fingers have been set on the keys with no clear song in mind. I’m overwhelmed by possibility. Sometimes it is comforting to have boundaries to narrow and contain one’s scope of thought. But in the coming years, I am not sure we will have that luxury because of technology.

Picking from Brien’s general media forecast for 2009, I would like to apply several of his predictions to the arts and the IMA in particular:

1. Digital media enables easier marketing access. Have you heard of Web 2.0? These tools are booming in the arts sector. With limited budgets and expertise, groups like dance companies and symphonies are using blogs and other tools to market to wider audiences with a direct focus. See the San Francisco Ballet Blog. How about providing digital perks for members? As I mentioned above, the range of tools is just going to become more expansive. At the IMA, I think our challenge will be to use these tools wisely. And with our crack team of Web programmers, designers and Nugget Factory, maybe we will push the limits with a few of our own.

2. Marketing means selling. Performance is always important but not always measurable. At the IMA, you have ads in the Star, on the radio and on billboards, while at the same time you’re sending out evites, traditionally mailed invitations, Facebook notifications and blog posts…you don’t even remember where you first heard about the event. While we try to capture this type of data as well as attendance on the IMA’s Dashboard, it’s worth faithfully tracking and rejecting the tools that don’t produce desired results.

3. Collaboration drives integration. This has been happening at the IMA for as long as I’ve worked there (more than a year). When Marketing, Development, New Media, Education, Curators, MIS, Horticulture and many others come together, it’s hard to tell who belongs to who. Diverse personalities and backgrounds allow for anyone to bring an idea to the table that may become the next golden nugget. Cross-departmental collaboration is key.

4. Data drives decision-making. Amen. I think this repeats #2 in making time for evaluation and being bold enough to let the data drive change rather than trying to do it all.

5. New players bring new perspectives. Both international and local competition in the arts and Museum world will awaken us to new thought and possible collaboration. Read our blogroll to check out what everyone else is up to. The IMA’s Professional Development team (which is cross-departmental by the way) is planning a staff exchange program with other institutions for just this purpose.

6. Social networks enable better listening. We’re working on this one. Through polls, comments, rating options, calls for user-generated content and social media applications on Facebook, the IMA is hoping you’ll talk to us. We truly desire a conversation and “raw” feedback on the material we are providing. Having this conversation can be difficult for an organization without a single representative or without time devoted to personal response.

7. Mobility matters. I predict we’ll see increasing opportunities for on-site interactivity inside and outside (think 100 Acres) the IMA galleries. The Newseum in Washington, D.C., does a nice job of creating popular and educational user-experiences in exhibitions with mobile devices.

So those are my current thoughts, which are not very well thought out because I’m busy trying to keep up with it all in real time. To speak to the IMA’s collection, you could say I’m just a girl at the piano recording sound.