At the beginning of the summer I set out to photo document each one:  Spaces with Iron, Mega Gem, Portrait of History, and East Gate/West Gate.  From this day of documentation I created detailed condition reports. From there, IMA Conservator Richard McCoy, and fellow conservation intern, Nicole Peters (of recent IMA Blog fame) and I returned to campus to wash all four and then wax the two bronze artworks.  By that time summer was in full swing and the 90 degree day with clear skies made for some pretty interesting (and sweaty) work.

Never having waxed a bronze in my life, I read up on the subject to prepare.  Patrick V. Kipper’s The Care of Bronze Sculpture breaks down each step in process of waxing a bronze artwork, as does the IMA blog from last year, Caring for Bronze in the Community.  It seemed easy enough.  Some light blow torching, applying wax, smoothing the wax out evenly, applying the blow torch again, et voilà!  You can imagine it was not so simple.  At ten in the morning the sun was already scorching hot.  Cleaning Will Horwitt’s Spaces with Iron proved difficult when the water was evaporating faster than we could rinse the suds away.

Rinsing off "Spaces with Iron" before waxing can begin.

After scrubbing off grime and bird guano from the artwork, we added heat to the already hot day with the help of a large propane torch.  Monitored by Richard, Nicole and I created an efficient team, with one of us heating the metal and the other waxing the surface.  At first I was a little unsteady with the large blow torch so I worked as the waxer, however my fellow intern Nicole did not share my jitters and helped out immensely.

Nicole Peters uses a blow torch to heat the bronze surface as Abbott Nixon applies a protective layer of wax.

Once finished with Spaces with Iron there was a great sense of satisfaction … for about one minute, then we remembered we were about to do this all over again with the Zhou Brother’s Portrait of History. Unlike the smooth surface of Spaces with Iron, Portrait of History has a mottled texture which proved difficult not only to clean but to wax as well.

Abbott Nixon cleaning the difficult surface of "Portrait of History" By the Zhou Brothers.

After finishing Portrait of History, the next day we moved on to washing John Torreano’s Mega Gem.  Seemingly straightforward, Mega Gem required a simple washing with Orvus soap.  After it was cleaned, Richard decided that the streaking on the piece made it look uneven and rather grimy.

The most straightforward way to remove this staining was to clean the entire surface with mild scrubbing pads.  A quick detour to a hardware store procured the scrubbing pads and off to work we went removing the dark streaks of aluminum oxide.  Aluminum oxide develops naturally on all uncoated aluminum surfaces.  Though it does reduce the metallic sheen of aluminum, it also prevents other more unsightly corrosion from occurring.

Our final stop was at Sasson Soffer’s East Gate/West Gate. The 30-foot-tall stainless steel sculpture was not in great need of cleaning: only the lower portion had areas of visible rust staining (iron oxide).  Never working with outdoor sculpture, I was intrigued by the development of this corrosion product.  Stainless steel is supposed to be stainless, right?

It turns out that similar to the aluminum oxide layer that develops to protect aluminum, stainless steel has a layer of chromium oxide which provides the “stainless” element that other iron alloys do not possess.  If the protective chromium oxide layer is damaged, rust (iron oxide) will begin to form.  The chromium oxide layer will regenerate in the presence of oxygen, however if some other element gets there first – like chloride ions – the protective layer will fail to regenerate, giving way to the development of iron oxide.

The Getty Center put together a wonderful book on outdoor sculpture conservation, Conserving Outdoor Sculpture: The Stark Collection at the Getty Center.  The book describes a test study about the removal of rust from two of their metal artworks, George Rickey’s Three Square Gyratory and Robert Adams’ Two. This spurred my interest in creating my own test to remove the rust on East Gate/West Gate.  We used the commercially available CLR, Super Iron Out, and Bar Keepers friend (phosphoric and oxalic acid-based products) and a solution of 10% phosphoric acid solution that was made in the conservation lab.

Products ready for testing their rust removal capacities. From the left: Bar Keepers Friend. CLR, 10% Phosphoric Acid and Super Iron Out.

The idea was to test the harsher acids and their safer counter parts.  We tested two areas: one of light rust build up and one of heavy rust build up. All four products were applied with cotton and left to set for 20 minutes.

Abbott Nixon applying Bark Keepers Friend with handmade cotton swab.

The result revealed that, phosphoric acid and Bar Keepers Friend were the most successful at reducing the rust.  In the end, we chose Bar Keepers Friend as the most appropriate product because it was much more mild than using the phosphoric acid, (it is an eye and skin irritant), also it can be potentially hazardous if inhaled.  We ended our day there – perhaps in the future these test results will help inform a more complete treatment of East Gate/West Gate.

Below the blue tape are the results from the tested rust removal products.

For now, I can walk away from this project with the knowledge that I set out to gain at the beginning of the summer.  Having now washed several outdoor sculptures, waxed bronzes, and developed a testing methodology for unknown products, I have a wealth of knowledge to take with me into my next conservation venture and beyond.

I first became aware of Hanneorla around 2007 when I was looking for Flickr users that were photographing artworks on the grounds of the IMA.  The set made for the IMA has 61 images in it and most of the contemporary outdoor artworks are documented. Although the sheer number of photos is impressive, what also interested me is the way the photos were taken: many of the works are shown from multiple sides, demonstrating that Hanneorla is skilled at looking carefully at art.

It was also around this time when Clay Shirky was getting a lot of attention for talking about how the Internet was ideally suited for us to spend our cognitive surplus doing something productive, rather than just watching television in the evening (Shirky estimates today this cognitive surplus is around a trillion hours a year for the adult population in the developed world).  Trying to harness but a sliver of a thumbnail of this surplus, we created the Wikipedia-and-Flickr-based project Wikiproject Public Art. While this continues to slowly grow, I’m always on the lookout for museum-based projects that tap into the cognitive surplus in a meaningful way.

So, to get to know the most productive art photographer in world better, I invited Hanneorla here for a discussion.

Richard McCoy: Will you tell me about your user name?

Hanneorla: We are a wife/husband team, so Hanneorla = wife (Hanne) + Orla (husband).  Original name, eh?

RM: What is your training as photographers?

HO: Well, we don’t have any. Our work has really been learning by doing all along.

We got our first digital camera in 2002 as a wedding present (a somewhat bulky Canon thingy) and were fascinated by the then-novel prospect that you could just shoot away, transfer, save, and view the images on a PC.  I remember taking our first digital pictures at a Gay Pride Parade in San Diego, standing on a chair in front of a café and trying to focus on the floats and (of course) the spectators.

Gay Pride Parade, Hillcrest, San Diego, California. Image: Hanneorla.

But we really got into photography when planning a trip to Santiago, Chile. Hanne was trying to find good images on the web of Santiago, but could only come up with old grainy ones.  We decided to take matters into our own finger-clicking hands, only to have our camera stolen on the last day in Santiago by a couple of very fast running teenagers. So from our debut as awesome globe-trotting photographers we don’t have a single shot!

RM: Can you talk about your favorite subject or photographic theme?

HO: We started out with a deep interest in modern architecture, especially skyscrapers and we still photograph those if they are spectacular enough.  Having been to places like Hong Kong, Singapore, and of course Shanghai, we have seen a few really breathtaking examples. Of course we also have images of a lot of boring bank buildings.

We have often been seen squatting on the pavement in front of a building pointing the camera towards the sky—and enduring people looking at us like we’re cuckoo.

UOB, Singapore. Image: Hanneorla.

RM: Do you remember when and why you first started uploading images to Flickr?

HO: That’s easy; it was in August of 2005. And why Flickr? Well, a friend found the site and thought it might be a good idea, so we checked it out and have been using it ever since.

RM: I really love the fact that you spend so much time creating detailed captions and descriptions for every single photo you upload, which makes your images tremendously useful to folks interested in the arts, and easy to find through search.  Can you talk about your methodology and purpose for this?

HO: That’s the hard and time-consuming part. Before we go anywhere, I (Hanne) spend many (really many!) hours researching the location, especially about sculptures (public and private), art museums, private galleries, and architecture.

I eventually collect the pictures and descriptions of all these objects in our own “guidebook,” so we know what to look for and where.  At this point, Orla usually groans when seeing this phonebook-sized guide book, or “to do list,” but usually ends up appreciating the research when we are on location!  But on many occasions, we have been out driving for hours and getting lost a lot before we find some measly piece of rusty iron that looked like a cutting-edge sculpture in our homemade guidebook!  After having gotten used to GPS technology we now find the artworks a lot faster. We often thank God (or whoever it is) in the sky for leading us in the right directions.

One thing that really irks us though (start of rant!): If you are a city, business, or person that commissions an outdoor sculpture or architectural masterpiece: maintain it and keep it clean!  In other words: TAKE CARE OF IT!  Many South American countries fail at this, as do several Southern European ones. For example, the absolutely magnificent Oscar Niemeyer-designed capital, Brasilia.  It’s a daring beauty in concrete.  A true wonder.  But it is dirty, unkempt, and really a disgrace. I think I’ll write to the new female president Dilma Rousseff and complain. Hey, they have enough money now, and certainly also well-deserved national pride. Asian countries are much better at this and they also have the courage to ask the most progressive artists (yeah, we know about Ai Weiwei and censorship), but modern Chinese art is a unique experience. And we cannot forget: The U.S. also generally has good maintenance of its outdoor artworks.  (Okay, end of our rant on that.)

RM: According to your Flickr stats, you’ve taken and uploaded 41,491 items.  This is beyond impressive.  Can you talk about why you like photographing art and museums?

HO: Allow me to quote from the Flickr profile:  “I am fascinated by contemporary visual art, cutting-edge sculpture, modern architecture, and futuristic designs.  To me the power of art is that it creates concepts and ’becomings’ intellectually and aesthetically. I’m always searching for the shock and delight of the new.”

About our ridiculously high number of photos: Well, it almost looks like a neurotic obsession, doesn’t it?  But it’s driven by pure delight and excitement.  Case in point: after having walked, and in the end crawled, for many miles in Valencia, Spain, we were suddenly dancing, footloose and fancy free, when we saw the contours of Santiago Calatrava’s City of Arts and Sciences.

Here are some more numbers: this week we passed 7,100,000 view counts of our images on Flickr. Boy, that’s more people than live in our own country of Denmark!

Hemisférico, Museo de las Ciencias Príncipe Felipe, Ciudad de las Artes y Ciencias, arquitecto Santiago Calatrava 1998 y 2000, Valencia, Spain. Image: Hanneorla.

RM: Will you talk a little more about the division of labor in your documentation work?  Who takes the photos, who uploads the images and who writes about them?  Do you each do a little of this or does one person?

HO: Well, Hanne is the slave. She does all the hard work pre and post. I play the Nietzschean part of the mastermentality while really being the slave. When we started out I usually said, “Why are you taking pictures of THAT, I already photographed it.” And she (very sensibly) replied, “Yeah, but sometimes your images are better than mine, and (most often) mine are better than yours”. So we both take pictures of the same pieces of art and then select the best shots to put up on Flickr.

RM: What if there were, say, 25 Hanneorlas out there documenting art and museums?  That would mean right now there would be approximately 1 million images about art and museums.

HO: That’s a great idea. Google Art Project is trying something, and they are to be commended for their efforts, but so far they have only about 12 museums.  It’s a good start. I guess we are trying to create a global, virtual universe of art. Presumptuous? Yes, of course! But we’re doing the best we can. We just need the 24 other Hanneorlas.

(Another rant!) Why, oh, why is it that so many museums around the globe are stuck in the digital Stone Age? Why don’t they allow visitors to take photos of their art? Instead they have these clueless bosses and guards clumsily preventing excited people (the Hanneorlas of the world) from sharing and spreading the pleasure of art!  We will drive MORE PEOPLE to visit your museums and boost your ticket sales and reputation by wetting the appetite of the more than 7 million people who have looked at our pictures from YOUR museum on our Flickr site. (Yes, we’re exaggerating a bit, but a LOT of people will get to know your museum—think about it).  We just don’t get it!

RM: Do you think it possible for there to be a kind of crowd-sourced documentation project in which all of the world’s art is documented by individuals?

HO: Oh, yes. Let’s just corral a couple of dozen Hanneorlas.

RM: Okay, this is a cruel question, but what would happen if Flickr suddenly went away and your account ceased to exist (as rumors have suggested might happen)?

HO: OMG! You mean a virtual Armageddon? Well, we have about 80% of our Flickr pictures on DVDs, so we might survive.

RM: Another tough question: Out of all of your photos can you come up with a top 10?

HO: Any of our many photos of the works of Claes Oldenburg, Fernando Bottero, Santiago Calatrava, Oscar Niemeyer, photorealistic painters, Chinese sculpture, and Tom Otterness. Plus a few more hundreds.

Claes Oldenburg 1976 "Clothespin," Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Image: Hanneorla.

RM: Care to say where you are going next?

HO: We’re already packing. We’re off to Paris, France. And probably thousands more photos.  And the hard part we forgot to mention: The demanding work after we get home. We have to do a lot of organizing, indexing, and captioning of the pictures which takes up an enormous amount of time. We are always two or three trips behind. Let’s see, there are Sao Paulo, Brazil, Dallas, Texas, and Iowa plus a few other states to do.  We need another holiday!

On Thursday of last week, my classmates and I from IUPUI’s Fall 2010 Collections Care and Management course, along with our instructor Richard, were honored by both the Indiana Senate and House of Representatives for the work we did in documenting the Indiana State House Public Art Collection.  Senator Jim Merritt and Representative Tom Saunders sponsored Concurrent Resolutions to recognize our work.

Representative Saunders presents the House Concurrent Resolution to instructor Richard McCoy and students of the IUPUI Museums Studies Program. Photo courtesy of Tad Fruits.

Senator Merritt presents the Senate Concurrent Resolution to instructor Richard McCoy and students of the IUPUI Museums Studies Program. Photo courtesy of Tad Fruits.

While we were in the House of Representatives to receive our Resolution, Representative Saunders said something that struck me.  He said, “I’ve walked past some of these statues for fourteen years, and I never knew the full story about why they were here.”

I think a lot of us have had a similar experience, and that idea got me thinking. How is it possible to walk by something every day and never really see it? Why are we content to know that something does exist, but not why it exists? Is there any way to stop ourselves from becoming so comfortable with our surroundings that we hardly notice them anymore?

The author standing in front of one the sculptures she researched, Colonel Richard Owen. Photo courtesy of Tad Fruits.

A lot of public art falls into the sad category of things we know are there but forget to notice.  This is one of the reasons why Heritage Preservation embarked in 1989 on the ambitious Save Outdoor Sculpture! program to get volunteers involved in documenting public art in their communities. The hope was that documentation would be the first step in caring for the art in our public sphere.  It was in that same spirit that the WikiProject Public Art was created by Jenny Mikulay and Richard McCoy for the Fall 2009 Collections Care and Management course. To pilot the project, the class documented all of the public art on the IUPUI campus. (A student of theirs wrote about her experience here.)

This past fall, my classmates and I participated in the second incarnation of this project. We researched 42 sculptures in and around the State House. When we started our work, the good folks at the State House Tour Office had almost no information on many of the sculptures.  Some of the artworks had been outside anyone’s notice for so long that nobody knew their real names.

Indiana Celebration. Photo courtesy of Tad Fruits.

That’s not the case anymore. One of the class’s best successes was from Alex Carrier, who discovered that the statue long known as Ceres is actually called Indiana (pictured above) and was featured at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of complacency with our surroundings, and it’s something we’re all guilty of. But the thing about public art is that it’s usually there because it represents something about us. It tells the story of a community. Think about it. For me, when I travel to a new city, the first thing I want to do is get acquainted with it. I wander, trying to get a feel for the place. More often than not, the art in a city tells me everything I need to know. Knowing whether its statues of past political leaders, informal folk art, religious icons, or avant-garde murals gives me a sense of a place’s culture. It helps me understand why it is the way it is. After all, those people put it there for a reason, so it must say something about them.

What does the art at the State House say about us? Why do we have a statue of Oliver P. Morton guarding the building’s doors? Why is there a bust of Colonel Richard Owen, who oversaw a Civil War prison camp, flanking the rotunda? Why is there a sculpture of a giant metal tulip tree leaf across the street?  Knowing the answers to these questions might just help us have a better understanding of ourselves and the community we live in.

Being recognized by the Indiana Senate and House of Representatives was a tremendous honor that my classmates and I won’t soon forget. We hope that the work we did will provide a starting point for further research and documentation of the art collection at the State House. We encourage anyone to view the results of our project (or, better yet, add to them!) right here and use the resources we created to discover more about the art, its subjects, and the artists who created it.

The truly dedicated IMA blog reader will know that Richard has been interested in putting information about art in Wikipedia for some time, and will also remember that the IMA has been interested in doing the same: from participating in the project Wikipedia Loves Art, to Max having lunch with local Wikipedians, to a number of folks from the IMA participating in the Wikimedia-sponsored event at Museums and the Web this year.

So, as a way to maximize collaborations, and kick off the final project for Richard’s Collections Care and Management course, we’ve arranged to have two rock stars of the Wikipedia world come lecture at the IMA next Tuesday night at 6pm.  The lectures will be free and open to the public.

Liam Wyatt, of Sydney, Australia, and Adrianne Wadewitz, of Bloomington, Indiana will discuss the importance of collaboration between Wikipedia and museums, libraries, and universities.

Here’s a little background on our IUPUI project: Last year Richard co-taught my Collections Care and Management course with Jenny Mikulay as we pioneered an effort to document the public art on the campus of IUPUI.  From that class we developed Wikipedia Saves Public Art (WSPA); you can read Richard and Jenny’s blog for more information.  The project has received a lot of positive attention, from within the Wikimedia Foundation and in academia. We’re most proud of this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education: Scholars Use Wikipedia to Save Public Art From the Dustbins of History.

This year our Collections Care and Management course is working with the resources developed though WSPA to document, research, and publish information about the public artworks in and around the Indiana Statehouse.

While this lecture will serve as the kick off for our project, it is also being developed in collaboration with Andrea Copeland, a professor in the IU School of Library and Information Science.  Andrea’s Public Library Management course has been writing two articles in Wikipedia as part of their class:
•    Public Library Advocacy
•    History of Public Library Advocacy

We are excited to bring together two speakers who have made a name for themselves by advocating for a stronger relationship between Wikipedia and the cultural sector:

Liam has worked closely with the Wikimedia Foundation to promote Wikipedia collaborations with Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums (GLAMs). Recently, he’s been traveling the globe to help museums and libraries collaborate effectively with Wikipedia, most notably as the first ever Wikipedian-in-Residence at the British Museum, a project that was highlighted by a recent article in the New York Times.

Adrianne is a Wikipedia Campus Ambassador at Indiana University, Bloomington who is currently writing her dissertation on 18th-century children’s literature. She holds the distinction of contributing to over 30 Featured Articles, making her an authority on creating high quality Wikipedia articles. For years, Adrianne has used Wikipedia in her teaching and is an advocate for its use in academia.

Please note that following Liam and Adrianne’s talks there will be a workshop for using Wikipedia. Space is very limited! If you’re currently working in Wikipedia or interested in participating in the workshop, please email Lori Phillips at lorphill@iupui.edu.

Wikipedia & the Cultural Sector
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
6:00–8:45 pm
DeBoest Lecture Hall

6–7:30 pm Lectures
7:45–8:45 pm Workshop

In the summer of 2010, I was fortunate to intern in the Variable Art Conservation Department with Richard McCoy. In 12 short weeks I examined ten years of planning and implementation documents for 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park. When I wasn’t wading through concepts and plans, I got to stomp around in a very unusual, very soggy, construction site filled with a fantastic tunnel and a basketball court that was transforming into seemingly unending arcs of red and blue.

In our project, we aimed to establish conservation dossiers—a kind of hybrid condition report and research document of the artwork identifying key characteristics of the 100 Acres artwork. The European Union-funded project Inside Installations: Preservation and Presentation of Installation Art provided an excellent road map for us to consider how to document the structures, sounds, and images found in 100 Acres.

As a result, I observed the birth of 100 Acres from a unique perspective. As the earthmovers and horticulturalists were busy shaping the watery landscape between canal and river, I reviewed internal and external communications, USGS reports, drawings and plans spanning the life of the project. It was a bit like looking into the collective brain of what has become a very real, internationally significant, park.

Richard tasked me with researching the Park’s genesis and development, and then the final realization of the installations. From this we began to organize the conservation dossiers into a series of records and summaries that future conservators and others IMA staff and researchers can use to understand questions of artists’ intentions, duration, and material concerns.

The experience proved to be both challenging and immensely rewarding. Working out of the conservation lab, I interviewed many of the 100 Acres team members, attended planning meetings, drafted a conservation security document, and compiled technical documents detailing conservation concerns related to materials and constructions.

Serving as the project thesis, questions of from what and how each artwork was made were addressed. We aimed to establish distilled summaries that future conservators could look to when trying to understand what is happening to the commissioned installations as they live and change within the environs of 100 Acres.

The maturing plants and settling gabion baskets of Alfredo Jaar’s Park of the Laments require an understanding of not only the materials used but also the collaboration that happened between artist, curator, and horticulturist.

Tea Mäkipää’s Eden II ship was constructed in Indianapolis at the Herron School of Art and Design sculpture studio and assembled on-site at IMA in the 100 Acres meadow. The accompanying guard house positioned on the lakeshore, allowing park visitors to peer into the ships bowels via mysterious audio and video feed, is a platform designed to support the artist’s vision as much as it is a part of the current installation of this work. The final artwork was realized after an intense period of collaboration between museum and artist in the summer and fall of 2009 – and several trips to local salvage yards for weathered materials to meet the artist’s concept of a lost vessel of refugees drifting onto the shores of 100 Acres from a distant, wasted land.

The very nature of the 100 Acres site-responsive artwork, situated within a floodplain, and in some cases encouraged to change over time, called for a contemporary model to frame our research. These dossiers will serve as a kind of missive to future conservators of these complex installations detailing what we know to be true now, what is most important to the realization of the artist’s concepts, and how each component of the park is expected to live within the place that is 100 Acres.

One can’t help but guess that Bangor’s civic leaders felt that an imposing rendering of Mr. Bunyan would bring them karmic notoriety among tourists.  It works – the snapshot is likely all I’ll ever recall about Bangor.

Some small towns have taken to pinning every shred of civic hope on the ability to boast the biggest strawberry, lava lamp, or bull.  The sculpture-as-tourist-trap approach to salvaging the economies and identities of rural America is documented with pathos and hilarity in the 2010 documentary World’s Largest, shown last July at the Indianapolis International Film Festival.

Our own city is making more serious strides in the public art realm, including the IMA’s 100 Acres, the Indianapolis Marion County Public Library’s thinmanlittlebird, and Cardinal, designed by Jeff Laramore for the new JW Marriott Hotel plaza downtown as part of the face-lift spurred by the 2012 Super Bowl.  How refreshing that the sculpture was installed, this past March, months before the building itself is finished.  (I’m eager to hear what my fellow citizens think of this piece – please comment).

And one year from now, artist Fred Wilson will unveil an intriguing installation on the lawn of Indy’s City-County building as a response to an existing work of public art: an African-American male freed slave figure that’s part of the Indiana Soldiers’ & Sailors’ Monument, circa 1901. The conversation that’s sure to be prompted by works like Wilson’s E Pluribus Unum is a manifestation of the social capital leveraged by art in the public square.

And if an over-sized strawberry sculpture can revive a dying rural town, that’s grand too.

Artworks that are displayed outdoors face different risks than those that are kept inside. The pigeon, for example, is a dangerous bird to bronze sculptures; the acids in guano can actually corrode a bronze patina in a fairly short time. Another risk public artworks face is that we simply stop caring. When we stop noticing the artworks that surround us, their significance and cultural context is lost.

(via Flickr user travelbex)

Enter Wikipedia Saves Public Art (WSPA) which we created as part of our Fall IUPUI Museum Studies class (you might remember our student, Elizabeth Basile, blogged about her personal experience with the project back in December). The logic of this project is to put information about public artworks into Wikipedia so that people won’t forget or stop caring about them. Yes, there’s a lot of guano in Wikipedia, but with its millions of viewers a day and openness to participation, it’s a vital resource for the cultural sector.

Before we started WSPA, there were only a handful of articles in Wikipedia about public art in Indianapolis—not so good for a city that brags about having more monuments than any city other than Washington, DC. Through our efforts, there are now 57 articles (and more each week) about local public artworks on Wikipedia. Since we started WSPA, our articles have been viewed more than 66,000 times. Now we are thinking big about how WSPA can truly become a global project and how to get more people to make articles about public art in their own town.

Recently, we’ve had a lot of help from Lori Byrd Phillips (an IUPUI Museum Studies graduate student) and Sarah Stierch (a soon-to-be George Washington University Graduate student, who runs her own blog, Sarah – Your Favorite Museum Intern. Together, we’ve begun developing “The Process” to help Wikipedians and public art advocates translate information contained in public databases into Wikipedia articles. For example, did you know that volunteers working through Heritage Preservation’s Save Outdoor Sculpture! surveyed Indianapolis in 1992-1994 and found 205 sculptures? Information about all of them is available online through the Smithsonian’s public database.

Thanks to Magnus for making the application that allowed us to make this chart

But a lot has happened in Indy’s world of public art since the early 1990s. That’s why actually going out and visiting the artworks is important—to verify the information contained in the Smithsonian’s database, to make note of any changes, and to use the tools of 2010 to research and share information about those changes. In addition to finding artworks surveyed by the SOS! folks, you can research new artworks that have been installed across the city. We’re grateful to have our laptops, cell phones, and Web-based tools that have allowed us to create these cool things:

Here’s the Flickr map that we are using to plot the location of the more than 500 images we’ve taken of public art in Indianapolis. By mapping them in Flickr we also resolve their GPS coordinates.

Here’s the Google map that we’re using to plot the original 205 SOS! entries from the Smithsonian database. While the Flickr map is a lot easier to use, we are also experimenting with Google Maps because its satellite maps are so much better.

And here are two Gowalla trips we’ve made for Indianapolis:

IUPUI Public Art Collection Highlights Tour.

Top 10 Public Artworks in Indianapolis.

Gowalla is an iPhone-based app that has a lot of potential for helping to geo-locate and photo document public artworks. Look, for example, at the number of people that have checked in and taken a photograph at the Texas Rangers Monument in Austin.

These tools have helped us locate, document, and share information about hundreds of public artworks in just a few weeks. With this information we will continue making Wikipedia articles about public art in Indianapolis. As mobile technology spreads (particularly GPS-based technologies), opportunities to care for public art will also grow.

Wikipedia Saves Public Art. Logo designed in 2009 by Michael Mikulay.

With all of this in mind, we’re excited about travelling to Denver next Tuesday to participate in the one-day workshop, Wikimedia@MW2010. Perhaps we’ll have a chance to discuss how WSPA is an effective tool for documenting collections of public art that are not well known beyond their distinct local context. Also in Denver, we’ll be joining Rob Stein to listen to Max Anderson and Samuel J. Klein (Wikimedia Board of Directors) give the keynote presentations and then work through important issues and ideas raised by other participants. Our experiences with WSPA have given us a few ideas for the cultural sector that we’d like to share in advance of Wikimedia@MW2010:

* In the spirit of the Encyclopédie and in particular the Descriptions des Arts et Métiers, Wikipedia can become the central hub of information about the materials, tools, and techniques artists have used and are currently using in their practices. Likewise, Wikipedia can become the central hub of information for the materials, tools, and techniques art conservators use in their work. An ideal article about a public artwork would include a material and technical description that was linked to corresponding and accurate information within Wikipedia.

* Public art today is often made using “current technology,” which presents an entire new set of issues. For example, Jaume Plensa’s Crown Fountain in Chicago is comprised of thousands of LEDs. Many technologies used in art quickly become outdated or difficult to update after a few short years. What if we could develop a similar “Conservation Status” for technologies like what exists for endangered animal species like the Bengal Tiger?

* Cultural institutions and public repositories should be encouraged to share their out-of-copyright images of art and put them in Wikimedia Commons.

* Finally, wouldn’t it be cool if the article about Art21 and all of its seasons was as thoroughly detailed and researched as iCarly’s?

What WSPA really needs, though, is for more people to make articles about public art in Wikipedia. Why not try it? If you need some inspiration, check out the “Template”, “Showcase,”, and “Open tasks”. And be sure to use the “talk pages” to leave feedback, questions, or ideas so we can all work together to make the project better.

Everything we know about Wikipedia and the other digital tools discussed above, we’ve learned by using our computers to experiment and engage in dialogue with more experienced contributors. (Wikipedia even gives “newbies” a sandbox to play in!) If you care about cultural heritage, you’ll find many kindred spirits in Wikipedia. That’s why we’d like to see you on Wikipedia, where we can work together and maybe even enjoy some Wiki Love. In an effort to bring some of the energy from Wikimedia@MW2010 directly back to Indianapolis, we’ve invited Liam Wyatt (Vice President, Wikimedia Australia) to give a public lecture at the Herron School of Art and Design on April 19 at 1:30 p.m. in the Basile Auditorium.

Do you have any memories related to Robert Indiana’s Love sculptures? Or Anish Kapoor’s “Bean” in Chicago? What about Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s saffron-colored gates in New York’s central park? How about one of those giant spiders by Louise Bourgeois…or those cows on parade? Did you ever take a picture with one of these or another public art work? Well, I surely have (see me below). Something about the interactive nature of public art, and the feeling that it informally exists in its spot for me, rather than for a gallery space or for someone’s wall, really helps me enjoy public art. And I think regardless of if you like a piece or don’t, it inevitably makes you aware of your space, your participation in it, and someone’s efforts to enrich or change it. As a friend recently reminded me, these works at least make you ask, “Why is this here?”

Saying hello to a Juan Munoz sculpture

The definition of public art differs depending on whom you ask and why you are asking. For example, must the government supply the funding for a project to officially be labeled as public art? Is graffiti public art (see also: Banksy)? Is my neighbor’s daughter’s sidewalk drawing a piece of public art? Is the Love sculpture even public art if it sits on the Museum’s private property? Raquel Laneria sheds some light on this murkiness in her Forbes article “Why We Love – And Need – Public Art.” But whatever the official definition – to me, its an art work in a public space that I can personally access – and I agree with those “nonprofits, federal organizations and private investors who believe it is something indispensable to city life,” and with Darren Walker, who is quoted in the article as having said, “public art is a public good.”

My collage of art, found within a three-block stretch of Washington Street in Indianapolis.

I recently attended the walking tour of George Rickey: An Evolution (I highly recommend it – the last guided tour is August 16) in downtown Indianapolis. Our guide, Mindy Taylor-Ross, prefaced the tour with some Arts Council info and mentioned that Indy was at one time pursuing a ‘percent-for-art ordinance,’ which would provide a more or less stable (though small) funding source for public art in Indianapolis. Many other cities, including Seattle and Chicago, already have similar ordinances. A percent-for-art ordinance states that a percentage of publicly funded capital improvement projects (usually between .5 and 2%) is reserved for the commissioning of public artworks, which generally end up inside the building or on its outlaying property. In my interpretation, this ensures that as long as the city spends money on building projects, public art projects will exists in these spaces. While I’m sure there are a lot of politics and red tape involved in this process, theoretically, this is a good idea. Though with the current government leadership such legislature is likely not a priority, perhaps it could be pursued once more when times are less rough. The Project for Public Spaces website indicates a few other funding sources for public art – public/private sector collaborations, percent and non-percent for art programs, soliciting developer participation, and several other alternatives.

For fun, I polled some friends to find out their favorite and least favorite public art works. Many respondents voluntarily said that the reason they liked it was because they can still vividly see it when they think about it. Pretty cool.

“Loved it”
Eero Saarinen, Gateway Arch (the St. Louis Arch); J. Seward Johnson Jr, The Awakening; Juame Plensa, Crown Fountain; James Yamada, Our Starry Night; Igor Mitoraj, Tindaro Screpolato; the Pineapple Fountain in Charleston, SC; Jim Benedict, Forks, Cheese, Hangers; Magdelena Abakanowicz, Agora.

“Not so much”
Julian Opie, Ann Dancing; Pablo Picasso, Untitled, Chicago. (especially with the baseball caps); Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen, Big Sweep.

What public art works do you like or dislike?

The Awakening

If you were out Sunday afternoon in Indianapolis and happened to see a sculpture flying mid-air across town, don’t worry — you weren’t imagining things.

The sculpture, East Gate/West Gate by Sasson Soffer took flight at around 6 pm and safely landed about ten minutes later. The work is one of four outdoor sculptures the IMA has loaned to Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis — otherwise known as IUPUI. Three of the sculptures were relocated earlier in the year, but East Gate/West Gate was too big to transfer via truck. Measuring 24 x 40 x 30 feet, the sculpture could only be moved via helicopter.

The IMA mapped a route along the White River that allowed for the fewest traffic interruptions, and the sculpture made a smooth landing with a welcoming crowd on IUPUI’s campus to greet it.

I bet you wish we had video of that, huh? Well, here it is, straight from the Nugget Factory:

The four IMA sculptures will join newly commissioned works of public art to be located along the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. The trail will connect neighborhoods, entertainment amenities and Indianapolis’s five downtown cultural districts. The western corridor of the trail, to be completed in 2011, will pass through the campus of IUPUI along Blackford Street and will run adjacent to two of the four sculptures from the IMA collection.

Sculptures on loan to IUPUI include:

East Gate/West Gate, 1973
Sasson Soffer (American, b. 1925)
stainless steel
24 x 40 x 30 ft.
82.56

Spaces with Iron, 1972
Will Horwitt (American, 1934 -1985)
cast iron and bronze
54 x 84 x 68 3/4 in.
81.220

Mega-Gem, 1989
John Francis Torreano (American, b. 1941)
heliarch welded aluminum plate, 36 cast aluminum anodized rosettes
7’2″ x 11′ x 7’2″
1997.6

Portrait of History, 1997
Shan Zou Zhou (Chinese, b. 1952)
Bronze
100 x 24 x 30 in.
2001.388

I searched the web for other interesting stories of relocating large pieces, but had a hard time finding anything. If you know of any, please comment about them. And if you have video or imagery — even better!!

"Peace Memorial" in Indianapolis, IN

With Martin Luther King, Jr. Day right around the corner, I thought it would be a good time to look at some MLK-inspired public art in Indianapolis. Martin Luther King Memorial Park in Indy visibly celebrates the battle for civil rights with several interesting works of art. One is a colorful mural on the walls of a building next to the park’s swimming pool, and the other is a two-piece sculpture of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy called “Peace Memorial.” The memorial marks the spot in which Kennedy gave a speech the night MLK was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Here you can listen to an NPR story explaining the historic night, 41 years ago, when presidential candidate Kennedy delivered the news of MLK’s death to shocked residents. His words calmed the city, and it has been noted that as a result, Indianapolis did not see the violence other cities experienced that night. The landmark and great significance of this place is a must-experience.

Martin Luther King Memorial Park, Indianapolis

But even with a bit of searching in Indianapolis, it was difficult to find public art related to the civil rights movement, black history or MLK. Indiana Avenue, Randsom Place, Walker Theatre and Crispus Attucks were several of the places I looked, from the outside. There is a Crispus Attucks Museum which includes “treasures from the first all African American high school in the state of Indiana and highlights its’ history-making African American community that produced such legends as basketball great “The Big O” Oscar Robertson; Grammy award winning super star, Kenny ‘baby face’ Edmonds; jazz great, Freddie Hubbard; and opera sensation, Angela Brown.” There are also plans to build an Indiana Museum of  African American History, to open in 2010 in the White River State Park.

Even Washington, D.C. has yet to fully realize a National Memorial dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr. A memorial designed by San Fransisco-based ROMA Design Group is under construction on the north east corner of the Tidal Basin between the Lincoln Memorial (where MLK gave his famous “I have a dream” speech) and Jefferson Memorial. Started in 2006, its completion is scheduled for 2010 and is dependent upon raising $120 million.

The Memorial is conceived as an engaging landscape experience to convey three fundamental and recurring themes throughout Dr. King’s life – democracy, justice, and hope. Natural elements such as the crescent-shaped-stone wall inscribed with excerpts of his sermons, and public addresses will serve as the living testaments of his vision of America. The centerpiece of the Memorial, the “Stone of Hope”, will feature a 30-foot likeness of Dr. King.

Some museums are already taking steps to document and celebrate the first African American President of the U.S. Fulfilling MLK’s dream of equality, Barack Obama will be sworn in as President on Tuesday. The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery has acquired a poster of Barack Obama by artist Shepard Fairey for its permanent collection. You can read my May 2008 post about Fairey for more on political portraits.

We will be celebrating MLK Day at the IMA on Monday, January 19. Join in, take a moment to realize this landmark celebration, and be sure to comment if you know of anymore Indianapolis MLK-inspired public art we should visit.