While flipping channels this past weekend, I stopped on a program on the  Indianapolis PBS affiliate WFYI called “From Naptown to Super City.” The documentary outlines Indianapolis’s progress from a city with a dying (if not, dead) downtown to the vibrant Super Bowl host city that it is this week. It’s a great program full of fascinating interviews, anecdotes, and images of this city. If you haven’t had a chance to see it and you live in Indy, the program will re-air on Saturday at 6 p.m.

One image from the documentary, in particular, caught my attention. It was of the National Sports Festival that was hosted in Indianapolis in 1982. I can’t find a copy of the image anywhere online so I’ll try to describe it to you (by the way, I have a VERY unreliable memory, so I might be remembering the details wrong…). Essentially, the image is of a stadium with a track, the stands are filled with fans and the infield is filled with athletes. In the center of the image stands 1, 2, and 3 from Robert Indiana’s Numbers. After doing a little research, (a.k.a. reading Richard McCoy’s blog from April 5), I discovered that they were used as backdrops to the gold, silver, and bronze medal platforms for the games.

The more I’ve thought about the image, the more I appreciate the connection to the current configuration of Numbers. We are currently displaying 4 & 6 in the Museum’s Welcome Center. 1, 2, 3, 4, & 6 now have a place in art history and sports history. Fingers crossed that 5, 7, 8, & 9 will have their chance one day, as well.

Robert Indiana, "Numbers," 1980-1983. Gift of Melvin Simon and Associates; 1988.241. © Morgan Art Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Indianapolis stands at the crossroads of the U.S., but now more than ever, it also stands at the crossroads of sports and art. The balance of the aesthetic and the athletic makes Indianapolis a vibrant host for the Super Bowl, but an even better home for the 1.7 million people that live in our Metro area.

Robert Indiana’s Numbers are just one of the many examples of art and sports intersecting in the Circle City this week. For a full list of all the fun cultural events organized in celebration of the Super Bowl, click here.

Filed under: Art, Local

After hearing the 2012 Super Bowl would be held in Indianapolis, we all were very excited!

Robert Indiana, "Numbers," 1980-1983. Gift of Melvin Simon and Associates; 1988.241. © Morgan Art Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The IMA is getting into the spirit by positioning 4 and 6 of Robert Indiana’s Numbers together on the 2nd floor, near the Welcome Desk. You can also check out one of the Super Cars (for the Carolina Panthers) near the entrance, outside the IMA’s retail store.

As Visitor Services Manager, I wanted to make sure we were prepared with as much information as possible for this huge event. One activity that we participated in was Super Service Training, which was set up to prepare our team with valuable tools and resources needed before the Super Bowl (and ensuing crowds) got underway.  We had an amazing time with our trainers! We played games, learned the history of the city, and absorbed valuable information that all customer service associates need to do their job at the highest level. After completing the training, all of us received our own “Super Service Pin” and certificate, pictured below. We will wear these with pride!

Come by and see us, and happy Super Bowl!

Filed under: IMA Staff

Robert Indiana, "Numbers," 1980-1982, Gift of Melvin Simon and Associates.

When you drive by Robert Indiana’s Numbers, you might think that these more-than-30 year-old sculptures look pretty good.  But if you get up close you’ll notice that the colors aren’t nearly as vibrant as they once were and the surface has lost much of its original glossy appearance.  Also, there are a few spots where the paint has chipped or fallen off.  So, even though our routine maintenance has kept them looking as good as possible, it’s clear they need attention, or since they were made by Indiana, I could say that they, ah, need some LOVE.

Numbers has been on my mind a lot recently because I’ve been researching the most intervening conservation treatment of the work’s life: this spring we’ll be completely stripping and re-painting each number to appear as they were first fabricated.

Before undertaking a conservation treatment of this scale it is important first to have all of the historic information at hand so we can be assured that we are making the right choices along the way, and ultimately that Numbers looks great.  I won’t go into all of the technical information of the treatment here, but I would like to share a bit of its story.  Thanks to the help of pre-program objects conservation intern Jessica Ford, we’ve put together a fairly complete history of Numbers.  Jessica and I have also added a lot of information to the Wikipedia article about Numbers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Art, Conservation

Many of you may have noticed on Valentine’s Day that Robert Indiana’s LOVE series was given a little Google-doodle-love. I, and others at the museum, found this particularly exciting as the IMA’s permanent collection is home to 62 works of art by Robert Indiana, including the original LOVE sculpture (once displayed in Central Park).

Google has paid homage to a number of artists, inventors, and social happenings since it started doodling in August of 1998. The practice began when Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin modified the company’s infamous logo to indicate their attendance at the Burning Man festival. Well received by users, the duo decided to create a second alternative logo for Thanksgiving. With a designated Chief Doodler and a team of designers, there have been over 300 doodles created for Google’s US site and over 700 internationally.

The recent Valentine’s doodle sparked my interest in the doodle history and with very little research needed (using Google of course), I came across a timeline of Google doodles. Here are a few that I found to be particularly noteworthy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Around the Web, Art

We challenged America to submit to be the IMA’s next top blogger and America answered.  Over the course of the next month, we’ll post the finalists in the IMA’s “So You Think You Can Blog” contest. After we’ve posted all five entries, we’ll let our blog readers vote for the winner. This week: Meet Crystal Hammon.

If I want to become part of the IMA’s blogging team (and I do), I’m supposed to write something about myself and the best anecdote or experience I had at the museum.

What is best? Best for you to read or best for me to have? I don’t know. It’s all been good. So I’ll just give you my top five experiences and let you decide what’s best. Let’s save the boring bio stuff for the end. I’ll try not to make it too boring, yet totally true. Have you noticed how easily people brag/exaggerate in their online bios? Everybody is a guru of something. Not me. But we’ll talk about that later. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Guest Bloggers, Marketing, Musings