To find some extra motivation for my long runs, I signed up for a Mini Marathon training program with a local runners’ organization. What I didn’t realize at the time is that the training run they sponsor each week uses the White River Tow Path which runs right through the IMA campus. Bonus!

I’m always a little nervous for the long runs; I worry about not being able to run the full distance, getting attacked by geese, or tripping off the path and falling into the Canal (it could happen!) What I never have to worry about, thanks to that interlude between Michigan Road and 38th Street, is being bored. The view of the IMA campus from the Tow Path feels like a little secret that not many people are in on. That little stretch of path is witness to one of the most alive places in the whole city!

On the west side of the path, I’ve been watching the construction in 100 Acres Art Park really start to heat up. In January and February the Visitor’s Pavilion started to take shape, a shape that for me conjures thoughts of Amazon stilt houses. A few footfalls further south along the path I could see a major excavation and mysterious wall being put it. I solved the mystery by going to the 100 Acres web page and looking at the proposals for the art installations, confirming my suspicion that the work is for Alfredo Jaar’s Park of Laments. I can’t wait to meditate on Jaar’s work when it is complete. To be honest, thoughts of laments while attempting to endure my very first ten mile run were a little heavy, it’s better to keep positive…

As winter’s bareness melted into spring, my view of the 100 Acres action became obscured in green. I shifted my attention to the east side of the path. I’ve been watching in wonder as the Oldfields-Lilly House and gardens come to life. I love imagining the amazing parties that might have taken place on the back patio of the Lilly house. In my mind there is always live music, tons of lanterns and comely ladies in pretty dresses. I like thinking about young couples getting wedding pictures taken with the spring brilliance as their backdrop.

My own memories come to mind as I look up at the main building. I fondly recall watching a movie on the terrace with friends on a hot Friday night a couple of summers ago, and an electric kiss I once received in the contemporary glass gallery on the third floor. Usually I visit the museum to make memories, but when I run by I feel as though I’m visiting my memories.

Now I’ve been to the IMA countless times, as a student, an art lover, shopper, and even as a movie buff. I’ve seen artist talks, gone to special exhibits, been on romantic dates and have picnicked in the gardens. The key thing about all of my past experiences is that the IMA has been my destination. On my training runs I am merely a passer-by, and a sweaty, tired, half delirious passer-by at that. It turns out that novel perspective has become an experience all its own.

So back in March as the snow began to recede I would regularly peer out into the drab naked trees with great anticipation of watching them green up and return  to the former glory of last summer.  As luck would have it someone shared this link with me around the same time.  It’s the Timelapse group on vimeo and there are some breathtaking videos created via time lapse photography

Here is one example that blew my mind.

This all got me thinking.  What if I stuck a camera facing out of our window for a month and took a photo every half hour?   Well, sounded like there was only one way to find out.   So here is 1 month of spring as taken every half hour, condensed into 23 seconds.

Watch as the gardens go green.

Image Courtesy of HowStuffWorks.com

I’ve always been interested in why advertisers do what they do. How do ideas get generated and why are they executed in the ways that they are? Where did the Energizer Bunny come from? And what exactly is Fahrvergnugen? 

Sometimes marketing campaigns are absolutely genius and other times they are absolutely ridiculous. If you’ve ever watched the show Mad Men, you’ll know that there’s a lot of thought and planning that goes into every message. A strong, clear, and creative marketing plan is the foundation for everything you see on tv, hear on the radio or read in a magazine; it not only articulates the messages (what), but it also outlines the audience (who), the objectives (why), the media channels (where), AND provides the reasoning for it all.

We’re just now finishing up the final points of our 2010 Marketing Plan. It’s been exciting to work on and also exhausting. In order to give you a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes work of museum marketing, I thought I’d share with you some of the basics of how we put together our plan.

Step 1: We broke the IMA apart into 10 different marketing categories.

1. Brand
2. Exhibitions
3. 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park
4. Public Programs
5. Membership and Individual Giving
6. Oldfields-Lilly House & Gardens
7. Events and Facility Rentals
8. Nourish Café and Catering
9. Retail – IMA Store, IMA Gallery Shop, Design Center, Madeline F. Elder Greenhouse Shop, Lilly Shop and the IMA online store.
10. New Media and Web

Step 2: We did a modified S.trenghs W.eaknesses O.pportunities T.hreats (SWOT) analysis for each. Full Disclosure: Because this is the part of the process that I like the least, the IMA’s plan only lists each category’s Strengths and Challenges (We’ve listed about 10-15 for each).

Examples of Strengths and Challenges:

Brand
Strength: New brand identity is fresh and dynamic
Challenge: New brand identity has yet to permeate public awareness

Membership and Individual Giving
Strength: New member-specific programming such as Member Night.
Challenge: Decrease in total IMA membership.

Step 3: We listed 10-20 marketing objectives for each of the categories.

Examples of Objectives:
Public Programs: Raise awareness of the Toby as a unique venue for movies.
Events and Facility Rental: Increase revenue from weekday facility rental. Emphasize the IMA’s meeting spaces.

Step 4: We identified the target audiences for each category. By determining the intended recipient of the message, it’s much easier for us to craft messages and identify media channels.

Examples of Target Audiences:
Nourish Cafe: Butler University and Marian College students
100 Acres: Nature and Wildlife Enthusiasts

Step 5: We crafted the Messages for each of the categories. (This is my favorite part of the process!) The Messages are the audience’s key take-aways from our marketing efforts. They communicate the value or benefit of the category (Retail, Exhibitions, etc.) and help to distill down our communications to  essential sound bites.

Step 6: We identified available media and created strategies for implementing and integrating Messages across the channels. By integrating core messages across traditional channels (print, tv, radio) and non-traditional (web, social media, grassroots), we hope that our campaigns will  have a broader reach and a greater impact.

Step 7 (Current stage): It’s now time to take the marketing plan to our colleagues in other departments and get their feedback. If all goes well, we will finish up our media buying, start on in print, tv, and radio production, and debut the new marketing plan in early 2010.

Stay tuned for updates on the unrolling of the marketing plan, the implementation of a new social media strategy, and the in-house production of a very exciting brand campaign!

Ooooo, the blog is getting a little too deep and self-consciously artsy.

Who said something about art being either plagiarism or genius?  In the horticulture trade, one of the first things a gardener learns is to borrow and adapt what others do. A good gardener  gives proper credit when told, “That is a nice plant combination.”  So, John Teramoto, Marty Krause, Annette Schlagenhauff (am I forgetting anyone?) – thank you for the exhibit Lay of the Land.

The exhibit combining Asian and Western art prints and poetry, set me to thinking about how often images in the galleries, or music and poetry cause me to recall some beautiful place I’ve experienced.  Nice memories and feelings …. trying to capture the bliss of the moment.

So as Autumn brings another season to a close, I offer some images and poems, with apologies to the artists,  that reminded this gardener of the promise and beauty of Spring as compensation for labors…

Work
The corn is baking in blue smoke,
Pickled tomato is piled ready on my plate,
And the chrysocolla of a young cedar branch is close.
Yet the breakfast that should be calm and enjoyable
makes me uneasy.
I’m worried about the manure I threw yesterday
From the horsecart and left on the slope.
Kenji Miyazawa 1896-1933

Manure and compost on vegetable garden at Oldfields

“Peasants Going to Work, by Jean F. Millet (IMA 40.65)”

============================================

Ah. It is spring,
Great spring it is now.
Great, great spring.
Ah, great –
Matsuo Basho 1644-1694

Apple blossom in April 2009, Gene and Rosemary Tanner Orchard, Oldfields at the IMA. Photograph by Sue Arnold

Check out the IMA’s searchable database of the art collection any time.

Check out the flowers, and maybe some leftover
manure,  dawn to dusk on our 152 acres, or right where you live.

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.

Their reasoning was sound. At the time, country estates were all the rage among wealthy Americans, who yearned to escape the noise and pollution of the cities—noise and pollution often created by the very manufacturing plants that had made them wealthy in the first place. And Landon and Boyd’s property at the intersection of Michigan and Maple Roads was both remote enough to qualify as countryside, yet near enough to the city to make commuting easy. (The Interurban rail line ran past on the western edge of the property.) Maple Road, which we know today as 38th St., ended at the White River—there was no bridge at that time.

While Boyd subdivided his half of the property into parcels fit for multiple mini-estates, Landon turned his half into a single estate he dubbed Oldfields. (At the time, wheat fields surrounded the property, which itself had been partially used as farmland before Landon and Boyd bought it.) The two partners then incorporated their new development as an actual town, which they named Woodstock, the same name they gave to the country club they created on the other side of Maple Road (now 38th St.) as an inducement to prospective residents. The Town of Woodstock, as the community was formally known, took awhile to develop; by the time Landon and Boyd moved into their newly built mansions, only one other person had done the same—Dr. Lafayette Page. Most of the other lots remained undeveloped until the 1940s and early ‘50s—at its peak, the town consisted of only nine houses.

In 1932, J.K. Lilly, Jr. bought Oldfields from Landon and extensively remodeled the mansion. Six years later, he built a separate residence called Newfield for his son J.K. Lilly III and his new wife, as well as building a recreation building known as The Playhouse, which had indoor and outdoor swimming pools and a tennis court.

By all accounts, in its heyday the town was a lively place to live, with town meetings and annual Christmas party taking place at Boyd’s former residence, which his daughter Helen and her husband, Judge William Higgins occupied. But the town came to an end in the early 1960s, when J.K. Lilly, Jr. started buying out his neighbors, offering much more than market prices to convince them to sell. Lilly then tore down all of the houses he bought, expanding his estate to encompass the entire Landon-Boyd property.

With one exception. In 1942, Dr. Wayne and Dorothy Ritter bought half a lot from Judge Higgins (who owned two lots in addition to the one his home was on) and built a two-story brick house facing 38th Street. When Lilly began buying the houses in Woodstock, the Ritters refused to sell. Today their former residence is the only Woodstock home left standing aside from the Lilly house and Newfield.

Speaking of which, after the IMA moved to the former Lilly estate—erecting its first building, Krannert Pavilion, on the site of the Boyd-Higgins home—Newfield housed the Museum Alliance’s Better Than New Shop (which closed in 2007), while The Playhouse became the Garden on the Green restaurant. Today, Newfield awaits its next incarnation, while the former recreation building is home to the Horticultural Society’s library. Ironically, the most lasting aspect of the former Town of Woodstock is the country club with which it shared a name—it’s still across the street, as it has been since Landon and Boyd were developing their town on the outskirts of town.

You can learn much more about what happened before and since the IMA’s move to Oldfields when Every Way Possible, a newly published history of the Museum, hits the shelves of The IMA Store in December in celebration of the IMA’s 125th anniversary.

Well, winter weather be damned. Here’s a day-by-day plan to heat up your weekend, despite the frigid temps.

On Thursday, Enjoy a Cocktail – Nothing says warm weather like a fruity drink. After work today, start your weekend early by grabbing a cocktail at Puck’s Happy Hour. As you sip your Orange Crush or Pomegranate Martini, close your eyes and imagine strolling along a beach or lounging by the pool. Once you have finished your drink and awakened from your daydream, stay warm by strolling through the galleries or enjoying a talk about the “Art of the Parade” with Alison Heimstead. (Learn more about Alison Heimstead, by clicking here.)

On Friday, Strut your Stuff –Don’t miss the “haute”est show in town. Friday night, the IMA heats things up with Project IMA – a runway show featuring the outrageous / beautiful / irreverent / glamorous designs of 16 fashion designers from the Indianapolis area (pictured below). The event is free and starts at 7:00 pm. Between the fashion and the music of DJ Stefan, it’s going to be one sizzling Friday night. (Learn more about Project IMA, by clicking here.)

On Saturday, Explore the Great Indoors – You don’t have to be outside to enjoy nature. Despite the lingering winter outside, our galleries are filled with scenes of spring. Need a little sunshine? Try a sunny, bucolic landscape in our American and European galleries. Yet to see a bloom in your garden? The Asian galleries are filled with colorful blossoms. (Explore the IMA’s Great Indoors from home, by clicking here.)

On Sunday, Step Back in Time – Visit Oldfields-Lilly House and Gardens on Sunday. As you stroll through the sunlit home, imagine the Lillys gathered on a warm summer’s day almost a century ago. Can you see the family dressed head-to-toe in white playing a game of croquet on the front allée of the mansion? Drift back to present day by wandering over to the warm haven of the greenhouse. Breathe in the fragrant air sweetened by an abundance of blooming flowers. (Learn more about Oldfields – Lilly House and Gardens by clicking here.)

So there you go, 4 days and 4 ways to celebrate spring regardless of the weather. If Mother Nature can’t provide, then the IMA will. Hmmm…That sounds like a pretty good t-shirt slogan, if you ask me.