If you haven’t heard of Bloggers Anonymous, it’s an informal get together the IMA blog team puts together every couple of months to meet people from the local blogosphere, and put a face to a name with the local arts scene. Who gets to come? We  reached out to the official museum blog’s blogroll, which keeps us up to date on local happenings and includes greats like On the Cusp and MW Capacity. Also, our team is collectively connected to a wide array of people around Indianapolis and beyond, and we each follow blogs and people on twitter depending on our own personal interests. We decided to cast the net wide and get them all here to talk about social media and how they are using it in their daily lives, including blogs, facebook, and twitter.

The exciting twist for this event is we are throwing it right before the IMA screens two movies. You’ve probably been to Summer Nights, the IMA’s outdoor summer movie series. Yesterday marked the start of another event happening this year at the IMA, the Indianapolis International Film Festival. Tomorrow’s double header includes one of the IIFF offerings, a documentary called Best Worst Movie shown in the Toby, followed closely by Troll 2 (the subject of the first movie) in the outdoor theatre. Sometimes I want a documentary, sometimes I want Italian B Horror. Tomorrow night, they’re both on the menu!

Rumor has it we have tickets to give away for the Summer Nights/IIFF double feature, so join us at 6pm outside the museum store, on the ground floor at the IMA to talk shop and then we will head to the movies. We can all relax and watch a campy horror flick, I hear there’s nothing like it for a little bonding time!

The NEW On the Cusp

Back at the IMA, there’s lots going on, including an experiment with a motion activated bird cam in 100 Acres, our Art and Nature park.  We’ve been working with our Grounds and Horticulture staff for the past couple of months, trying to capture some of the wildlife on our campus.  In the upcoming year, we will see the construction of a visitor center and countless installations of site specific art.  We’ll be documenting all of this, as well as much of the natural environment.  Hopefully wildlife interacting with art.  In the meantime, enjoy the video below, which includes several shots, of – you guessed it, woodpeckers.

The Facebook/Twitter call to arms went surprisingly well and I got some ridiculous, funny, relevant and interesting suggestions.  Here are a few,  including…

• how about a commentary about Kanye West and his supposed status as an artist…
• how about “what is an online exhibition” we don’t talk about it but we should because physical ones are not always possible
• post ideas: what consistently surprises you at IMA / what’s your long-term plan / How have visitors responded / best project

So here are some of my responses.

how about a commentary about Kanye West and his supposed status as an artist…?

I’m not messing with Kanye.

how about “what is an online exhibition” we don’t talk about it but we should because physical ones are not always possible?

Online exhibitions are projects that make sense but aren’t often implemented.  The superb Vogel 50/50 program is an incredible concept and this site will become a great example of an online exhibition (it’s still under development by the National Gallery of Art) – but will beautifully pull together much of the 2,500 works of art from 50 States.  Tradtionally, the IMA focuses on physical installations of exhibitions.  New Media’s role in this is to provide interpretation online – working closely with curatorial, marketing, education and more.  Our focus is always on the story telling.   The curator is primarily focused on the actual installation.  But, there is room for more collaboration and new types of exhibitions to emerge, especially on the web.  Brooklyn Museum’s Click! should be a sign of things to come across the art museum field.  The possibilites at the IMA are endless, ranging from a traditional online exhibition of art not available in galleries, art too fragile too install, and other factors.  I’m most excited about the possibility of one day developing from scratch an online exhibition in complete collaboration with curator and artist.  We’ll see …but surely, the future of the online visitor/museum experience online will include more web-focused exhibition.  Right?

Vogel 50/50 site

what consistently surprises you at IMA / what’s your long-term plan / How have visitors responded / best project?

I most surprised that we keep coming up with ideas and that we have the freedom to implement them.

The long-term plan is to be brilliant at developing digital projects and content.  It’s hard to have a long-term plan in this field though, things change quickly and it’s a big mistake to assume that our visitors will buy into our plan.  Agility is essential.

The visitors that interact with us online have been overwhelmingly positive.  We want to interact more and hear from everyone – even if it’s not positive.

My top (3), favorite projects I’ve been lucky enought to work on at the IMA have to be – Roman Art from the Louvre Webisodes, Nature Holds My Camera: The Video Art of Sam Easterson, and ArtBabble.  Having said that, I could also easily create a Top-100 list.

Speaking of ArtBabble, check out the new section called Goodies, and have a little fun.

I’m signing off, but I would love to hear your input on anything in this post – online exhibitions, IMA projects, woodpeckers, ArtBabble Goodies, even Kanye.

Indianapolis Art Survey – Scott, over at “On the Cusp.org,” has posted a survey that hopes to collect the thoughts and habits of the Indianapolis art scene. The questions are thought provoking and answering them took about 10 minutes. If you’re in a survey mood, head on over and check it out.

pushbuttonreceivebacon.com – As of late, I’ve had to get pretty good with MS Paint and can really appreciate people being creative with such a simple and broken tool. I’m so used to the constraints of Paint that I actually like it more than say, the Gimp. If you can relate to being creative on a budget that doesn’t include Photoshop, check out this blog with bacon it its title.

Environmental Impact of Google Searches – Who knew?

Koto Sound Team Kyara – This Friday, join us in The Toby as this acclaimed ensemble interprets classical, jazz, and anime themes through traditional Japanese instruments. As much one can rock on a Koto, I expect this performance to be up there as far as “bangers” go. Join us.

Monday Music – “Lucky Girl” by The Pepper Pots. A little sugar for Monday ears that also like to hear a good “Iron Man” reference.Download audio file (The_Pepper_Pots-Lucky_Girl.mp3)

#6. IMA's Six Degrees of Separation

LACMA did it, everyone on Facebook is doing it, and now the IMA is turning it up a notch with blog “tagging”. Here it is…what you all have been waiting for…25 Random Things about the IMA. 

The Rules (according to Facebook, of course): Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged in your post.

1. General admission to the IMA is FREE!
2. Percival de Luce’s oil on canvas painting, An Anxious Mother, was the Museum’s first acquisition.
3. One person in all of Samoa visited our Web site in 2008. That person looked at five pages and stayed for just over two minutes.
4. Last year, 2,671 visited our site with an iPhone and 36 visited via a PlayStation 3.
5. One person visited the IMA Web site with a 1 bit screen resolution. How is that even possible?
6. Six Degrees of Separation: IMA staff member and blogger Anne Laker is cousins with the America’s Top Model Winner Adrianne Curry, who is married to Christopher Knight (aka Peter Brady), who once guest starred on That ’70s Show with Debra Jo Rupp (Mrs. Forman), who played Phoebe’s sister in-law on Friends, which starred Jennifer Aniston, who played a love interest of Kevin Bacon in the 1997 romantic comedy, Picture Perfect. Whew!
7. There are approximately 164 fluorescent lights mounted to the wall in the IMA’s Pulliam Great Hall. The lights are part of a three-story fluorescent light installation by Robert Irwin entitled Light and Space III, which was specifically designed for the museum’s main 60-foot atrium.
8. The largest painting in the IMA’s collection is Rosy Cardita by Larry Zox, measuring 69” 252”.
9. The smallest painting in the IMA collection is Portrait of Paul Peckham by Lewis Peckham. It measures 1 in. x 1 ¾ in.
10. Nancy Reagan and fashion designer Bill Blass (an Indiana native), donated a red silk, chiffon and taffeta evening dress worn by the former first lady to the Museum’s Textile and Fashion Arts Collection.
11. There was actually a vending machine in the building that sold art – Gallery of the Machine by Matt Eickhoff and Artur Silva. (The vending machine is making its way back to Artur’s studio at the Harrison Center for the Arts for some repairs.)
12. The IMA’s collection includes Vincent Van Gogh’s Landscape at Saint-Remy, which was painted during the final year of the artist’s life.
13. The IMA recently acquired the landmark Miller House and Garden in Columbus, Indiana. Designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2000, it is considered one of the country’s most highly-regarded examples of mid-century Modernist residences.
14. The IMA has its own in-house Nugget Factory which conceptualizes, films, produces and delivers high quality art video for ArtBabble.org.
15. The 52 acres of the IMA campus currently open to the public comprised the town of Woodstock in the early 20th century.
16. Encompassing 152 acres of gardens and grounds, the IMA is among the 10 largest encyclopedic art museums in the United States.
17. Last year, 508 IMA volunteers donated more than 26,000 hours of their time.
18. According to the Dashboard, the IMA’s Horticulture staff planted 30,443 new plants on the IMA grounds in 2008.
19. Martin Luther King Jr. Day is one of the most popular days for the IMA. In 2007, we welcomed 4,500 visitors on MLK day.
20. Within two years of beginning an engineering-based, detailed approach to reducing its energy consumption, the IMA’s average monthly demand for electricity and natural gas was reduced by about 40 percent. The energy conservations also reduced the IMA’s greenhouse gas emissions (CO2) by more than 6,700 tons.
21. The IMA’s Stout Reference Library has more than 100,000 items of information on visual arts including books, periodicals, museum publications, auction catalogs and individual artist files.
22. As one of the 10 oldest general art museums in the country, the Indianapolis Museum of Art was founded during American history’s most remarkable movement in creating museum institutions, starting in the 1870s when New York and Boston established their museums.
23. The Toby was built using 23,642 pounds of recycled material.
24. In 2010, the IMA will open 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, which will be one of the largest contemporary museum art parks in the country. The Park will feature artworks commissioned from both emerging and veteran artists, who will create temporary and permanent works in response to the site’s varied geography.
25. The Indianapolis Museum of Art offers FREE general admission! Oh, wait…did I already mention that?