A recent vacation to Maine included an encounter with a mythic lumberjack in the city of Bangor.

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Filed under: Art, Musings

This post was co-written by myself and Jennifer Geigel Mikulay.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Art, Conservation, Local, New Media, Technology, Travel

This blog post is the second written by IMA Public Affairs intern Sarah Miller. Read her first post Personal Art Appreciation. She recently earned a Master of Arts Management with a Visual Arts Concentration from Columbia College Chicago and currently works at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Illinois.

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

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Filed under: Art, Local, Musings

“Has anyone seen our intern?” This blog series follows the IMA’s Public Affairs Intern, Jennifer Anderson, as she escapes the office space for a little R&R in the galleries…

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Art, Current Events, Local

"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. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Art, Current Events, Local