Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

I received an email the other day from a good friend with whom I attended the Cleveland Institute of Art in the mid 1990’s. He had been back to Cleveland for a visit, and had met up with another CIA painting alum to walk the galleries at the Cleveland Museum of Art. He wrote about revisiting paintings that had been important to him during school, like Rubens’ Portrait of Isabella Brant and about other paintings that stood out now, at this different moment in his life, including an Inness landscape. I haven’t been back to Cleveland since 1999, and I’m curious about which paintings might stop me now, and how different the list might be for me today than it would have been 10 years ago. To tell the truth, it isn’t necessary to travel to a museum that I haven’t been to for many years to have a similar experience. I’ve been working at the IMA for a little over five years, and I am amazed by how often a work of art that I haven’t paid much attention to suddenly asserts itself.

Isabel Bishop’s Tidying Up

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The current Star Studio exhibition, More than Four Legs: A Closer Look at Chairs asks visitors to think carefully about and look closely at chairs. Of course, since this is a Star Studio exhibition, visitors are also encouraged to translate these thoughts and observations into practice by creating a model chair to display or take home.  I thought it might be fun to share images of a few of the chairs that visitors have left in Star Studio.

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In Star Studio, we spend a lot of time explaining to visitors that the drop-in art making space is not a “kids’ area” where parents sit while their children make artwork…it is a space for all of our visitors. The idea of the space is that any visitor (even grown-ups) can stop by and make something in response to the work on display. Many people take us up on the offer (you can see the results here), but often we meet adults who seem to think of the production of art as a child’s endeavor, something that you leave behind when you get a job and a mortgage.

In the years since Star Studio opened, countless visitors have declined the invitation to make something in the drop-in studio by saying “Oh no, I’m not creative.” Huh. I’ve never had a child say that, though. Read the rest of this entry »

The drop-in art making area of Star Studio starts each show looking pretty spare…white walls, gray cabinets, gray tables, overhead fluorescent lights…very clean and very empty. Once each show opens the same thing invariably happens…an impromptu visitor-generated installation begins to form in the space. Visitors stop in, make works of art, and ask to display them. We tape the work to the wall, or arrange it on the counters and watch the space change over the run of the show.

Don’t get me wrong, the majority of artwork that visitors make goes home with them, but a percentage always gets donated. Often visitors will make more than one piece, so that they have one to take home and one to add to the collection. We didn’t start out asking people to leave their work, but it always happened. Now, we build it into the consideration of the activities that will be offered in the space. It isn’t really like the formal artist-displaying-work model that is in evidence throughout the museum…the work is typically anonymous and individual pieces aren’t highlighted.

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Anyone who knows me knows I love a good mixtape. ( I still call them mixtapes, even though now it’s a mix cd, or an iTunes playlist, or even a muxtape). I love making them, I love thinking about the connections between each song that I select, and I love trying to figure out why someone else chose particular songs in a particular order.

Recently, Bob Boilen posted an entry to NPR’s excellent All Songs Considered Blog where he provided readers with the first song of a mixtape, and asked them to add responses in the comments section, with each new post adding a new song to the mix in response to the previous post. Brilliant!

Let’s try to do something similar with works of art. I’m selecting the first piece in a kind of virtual exhibition. You pick the next one, and post a comment with information about the work, a link to an image of it, and a description of your reasons for selecting it (could be formal similarity/difference to the previous piece, subject matter, some biographical information that links the artist to the previous work, whatever…) Remember that you are responding to the last piece added in the comments section (although some larger themes might develop) and provide some description of why you are adding a particular piece to this chain o’ art.

I’ve chosen a piece from the IMA’s collection as a starting point: Kenneth Noland’s Fall Blues 1961-64.

It is a painting that I have warmed to over time, and one that I hope allows for a diverse set of responses. I’m interested to see where this game of curatorial telephone leads. Your turn…