Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

Image from toxel.com

While roaming the Internet one day, I ran across a design website with photos of fun coffee mugs of all shapes and sizes. It made me think of our newly opened European Design exhibit, and work, and drinking coffee since that’s what I do at work–drink coffee.

I found some more interesting websites about coffee, especially ones where coffee intersects with art and design. And I thought back to the old days when our coffee arrangement here at the IMA was entirely different. Cue the harp sound effects and wavy visual for a flashback… Read the rest of this entry »

The blogs tend to concentrate on the “tubes” and the IMA’s presence in the virtual world, so I’d like to take a moment and focus everyone’s attention back on the brick & mortar museum. I have been conducting a little research on the IMA, comparing it to some sister institutions – Detroit, Minneapolis, Cleveland, and St. Louis – and how our security department stacks up to others in operational costs and “bang for the buck.” During this research I have come to reaffirm, at least in my own mind, how unique the IMA is and how great our responsibility is to protect it.

I’ll try not to belabor the point with too many statistics, but in sheer square footage – 669,000 and change in the main building – the IMA ranks in the top ten out of about 230 other art museums. That’s a lot of square footage our security officers have to patrol each day, 24/7/365. And in that space is an art collection of roughly 54,000 pieces of art from all over the world and from all time periods.

Now, numerous other institutions have bigger buildings or more artwork, so let me add a few other amenities that the IMA has: a reference library, studio/education space, retail and dining areas, the 500-seat Deer-Zink events pavilion, and The Toby, a 600-seat theater to augment our warm-weather outdoor amphitheater.

IMA's campus and LOVE

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I was down in exhibition holding the other day, talking with some of the Installation guys about a Tim Hawkinson piece called Moebius Ship. The piece is huge – about 9 feet across – and the conversation brought to mind how Contemporary art poses unique challenges to Security staff that aren’t usually an issue with more traditional art.

Contemporary art is frequently made up of everyday materials and items familiar to normal, everyday people. As such, visitors are not always sure how to react to the art and oftentimes behave contrary to what we would wish. IMA has artwork composed of everything from TVs (Nam June Paik), projectors (Kara Walker), and common furniture (Vito Acconci, Bill Woodrow) to electronic signs (Jenny Holzer) and neon lights (Robert Irwin, soon). We even have flat art on the floor instead of on the wall (Adrian Schiess). Visitors want to sit on the furniture and play with the electronic equipment. They want to TOUCH the stuff, for crying out loud!

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I don’t know if anyone has noticed but gas prices are insanely high, so I’ve been spending more time at home on the computer and less time doubling down at my favorite southern Indiana casinos. Which brings me to one of the special projects I’ve been working on: finding alternatives to the gas-powered vehicles Security uses to patrol the museum campus. Actually, “finding” alternatives has not been that hard, “getting” them on the other hand…

For instance, I found this nifty piece of automotive hardware that our officers would just love to drive. The Tesla Roadster is an all-electric vehicle capable of 0-60 in 4 seconds and a top speed of 125 mph, good even compared to internal combustion cars. Who wouldn’t want to be seen tooling around the IMA campus in one of these drop-top babies? Alas, the $100K price tag would be difficult to slip into the capital budget without any CFO having an arterial incident. And really, where could the Tesla hit top speed… maybe by the Lilly House, but why bother?

More suited to our needs would be the Miles ZX40, a steel uni-body construction, all electric four-door able to hit a blazing 25 mph top speed.

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Okay, now that Dancing With The Stars is over I can get down to business. I’m supposed to write about my department, Protection Services, or as I prefer to call it, Security (it’s shorter and sounds scarier). Most folks are familiar with the uniformed officers who prowl the galleries during the day, the ones who smile and point the way to the restrooms and the Van Gogh, and that may be the extent of their knowledge of the department. Deep in the building, however, is the nerve center of the department, the Control Room. Some people know about it, a few have seen it, but everyone is fascinated by it.

The Communication Specialists who work in Control are responsible for monitoring everything and everybody. To accomplish this grand task, Control is equipped with video systems, audio systems, HVAC systems, fire systems, and alarm systems. It has a biometric security system and a multi-channel radio station. It even has a freakin’ drive-up window! I can’t give away all the secret stuff, like the GPS tracking chips we embed in every new staff member, but here’s a little history of the Control Room.

Here I am in the old Control Room sometime back in the 90’s. I spent a lot of years in this room and did some of my best work in there (more about that later).

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