Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

I have the incredible privilege of spending four weeks at the American Academy in Rome as an Affiliate Fellow, representing the IMA. From time to time I hope to post some of my adventures and discoveries here. What a ride!

September 30, 2009

This morning I went on an orientation tour of the library at the American Academy in Rome. It is a beautiful library, both conceptually and physically. Imagine sitting in small reading rooms next to wide open windows (no screens) that open onto idyllic Italian gardens. Imagine several floors of stacks that go down into a kind of crypt, and also those small, ladder-like circular stairways that lead to upper-level shelving. Imagine an aesthetic of contemporary simplicity and book preservation science in harmony with warm, traditional wooden desks and chairs. The cataloguing system is unique to the Academy, neither Dewey nor Library of Congress. The fellows and residents here have wonderfully generous access after they’ve taken the orientation tour.

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I have the incredible privilege of spending four weeks at the American Academy in Rome as an Affiliate Fellow, representing the IMA. From time to time I hope to post some of my adventures and discoveries here. What a ride!

Sept. 26, 2009
Tomorrow I fly to Philadelphia; later that evening, I leave Philadelphia for Rome, Italy. The plan is for me to work on an interview project (more about that later) at the American Academy. This incredible opportunity is possible because the IMA is an institutional member of the Academy. That means the IMA is entitled to send a staff member for an Affiliate Residency of four weeks each year.

Tonight, after some fairly frantic days of preparation and with one whole suitcase full of voice recorders, cameras and various recharging and power adapting devices, the whole plan feels pretty fantastic and abstract. Someone just asked me where I’ll be at this time tomorrow night. I guess the answer is, “somewhere over the Atlantic.” Yikes! I’ll write again when I get to Rome.

from flickr user hum2000_8a

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Ever since Indiana Jones began his pulpy adventure series into far-flung and exotic locations, the discovery of artifacts has gone from a virtually unheard of profession to a glamorous one, seemingly designed for a dichotomous group of swashbuckling rogues and charming intellectuals.  Archaeology has evolved (much like its subjects) from the cavalier work of aristocratic colonialists like Lord Elgin and Captain Cook to a field far more accessible to the public.  Some of said discoveries may even take place in, wonder of wonders, Indiana.  Mine was free of cannibalism and international conflict, but not, I promise, free of intrigue.

Now, Dear Reader, you can by a mere flick of the clicking finger discover what we’ve discovered at the IMA, which, I think, is pretty rad in the stealthy world of museum administration.  Most recently, what we’ve unearthed is not from Jaipur or Nimrud, but from an apparently long-forgotten box on a shelf.  But sometimes it happens that real life discoveries are just as romantic as those of Dr. Jones’s folklore.

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