Given that I don’t consider myself much of a writer, it seems practical that the rest of my blog contain photos, as this is a little more up my alley. Photography is a great passion of mine, and I’m sure as time goes on, I will share many more pictures on this blog.

photo by Rumi Sakuraeda

During my time at NUVO I had a few opportunities to take photos of some familiar faces here at the museum. I also took some time to get some snapshots of our little neck of the woods, quaintly nestled behind the library.

What geek habitat is complete with out a Rubik’s Cube?

Seriously…You can’t have just one

Most comfortable chair ever

This is the center portion of our office and the general gathering area for MIS meetings

And here are a few that I took while working for NUVO:

Max Anderson, Click here to view the original NUVO article

R Craig Miller, Click here to view the original NUVO article

And of course the beautiful fountain in HDR (High Dynamic Range)

View the IMA on NUVO's site

As the IMA website indicates, we have taken official possession of the Miller House and Garden in Columbus, Indiana. This will make the second National Historic Landmark property the IMA has in its collection (Oldfields-Lilly House and Gardens being the first). How’s that for bragging rights! As a practical matter however, home ownership is not all fun and games in this situation. Ahead lies a road of challenges for the staff working on MHG teams.

Columbus is an hour’s drive south of Indy, which makes it difficult to explore the house and conduct business with the current local staff. Director of Lilly House Operations Bradley Brooks, head of our team of six, has spent a lot of time on the phone and making the trek south in the run-up to taking possession of the property. He has interacted with everyone from members of the Miller family to a nephew of  Eero Saarinen. Bradley has been, and continues to be a very busy beaver.

The task of converting a residential property into a museum showcase has been an educational experience for our team, so far. It has forced us to look at all the things we do here at the museum, a lot of which we take for granted, and formulate how to adapt and transplant these practices to a former family home fifty miles away.

Chief Registrar Katie Haigh and Conservator-in-Charge David Miller (along with more staff down the road) will need to inventory, evaluate, photograph, and catalog the entire contents of the house. Katie and David are currently working with Buildings guru Bert Reader to determine what can be done with the climate control systems to best preserve the house and its contents. And don’t forget, the house itself is a piece of art–made primarily of steel, marble and glass—so David will have to develop a list of acceptable cleaning supplies, and a schedule for keeping the house spic and span. Structural drawings, building materials, maintenance records and other information on the house and other buildings on property will need to be collected and researched to assist with preservation efforts.

Bert, Safety Manager Mindy Summers and I have been looking at the safety and security needs of the house. Needless to say, there are some interesting and quirky aspects to MHG.

It’s been an Easter egg hunt at times to find some of the security devices hidden in the many nooks and crannies, and Bert has had to deal with the Complex Issues Dept. at the phone company. Who knew? In addition to proposing some upgrades to the existing security and fire systems, we have met with Columbus fire and police personnel to discuss access issues and response procedures to ensure smooth cooperation with local agencies.

Mindy and I will take our existing procedures from the IMA, such as access lists, on-call lists and key control, and adjust them to fit the Miller House environment. We will eventually have to add other safety procedures, such as a disaster plan and a hazardous chemical inventory, to the many books that will reside at the house. After the house is reconfigured to our satisfaction (or budget limits), we will determine staffing levels, work schedules, the inventory process, lockdown procedures and other security duties to be performed.

In the meantime, Director Max Anderson, Sr. Curator of Design Arts R. Craig Miller, Director of Environmental and Historic Preservation Mark Zelonis and others will devise the plan for how to present the house to the public.

The to-do list is endless, but having another landmark property like the Miller House adds a huge feather to the IMA’s cap and broadens the art experience that we can offer to our visitors.

New Media will be pretty busy starting today and into the weekend.  We’ll be documenting both days of the symposium and grabbing interviews with some of the biggest names in the Design world.  Pretty cool.  Now that we’re running ArtBabble, we need to work harder and smarter to bring you the best possible video content.  The European Design Symposium is a perfect opportunity to do add to the ArtBabble selections.

Juli Capella's Homepage

Also participating in the Symposium is designer and architect Juli Capella.   His site is delightful, playful, surreal, funny and professional (all things I hold in high regard).  It’s hard to pull that off, but Juli manages to do that in the physical and online world.  His site is a must see and you can stop by the Symposium to hear from him directly.  I promise its worth it.  So why am I singling him out?

This past fall, I had the opportunity to interview Juli for our In the Factory series.  This series can be found on our iTunes U page or on ArtBabble and focuses on direct interviews with artists and designers.  Dan Dark and Danny Beyer in the Nugget Factory, shoot and edit this series in the same style and we use the same line of questioning for every interview.  I love ITF and once ArtBabble gets out of the beta phase (I promise, very soon), anyone with an internet connection can hear directly from people like Juli Capella, Maya Lin, Emily Kennerk, Alfredo Jaar, Orly Genger and more.  It’s about artists talking directly and honestly about their creative processes, experience in the art world and the act of creating.  Dan and Danny do a fabulous job of revealing these insights through their own creative approach to video editing.  It’s the type of content we should all be focusing on.

So I leave you with Juli’s In the Factory (one of my faves).  It may be Thursday, but it already feels like a Friday.  See you at the IMA?