Believe me, writing a book is no day at the beach. From the moment you move from the what- a-good-idea-for-a-book stage to the put-your-butt-in-chair-and-crank-out-the-pages stage, creating a book is much more about grinding it out than it is about experiencing the joy of creativity. When it comes to writing a book, inspiration is highly overrated—usually by those who haven’t written one. A book is a chore.

Okay, I hear you. If it’s so bad, why do it? Because, when it’s good, it’s very, very good. There is no high (endorphin, chemically induced or otherwise) that can compete with the euphoria that comes from writing a great sentence, paragraph, or page. Writing requires discipline, but once in awhile, you get rewarded for your efforts. And it’s those moments, individually and collectively, that keep a writer coming back to the task at hand, even on those days when it would be a lot more fun to dig a ditch than sit at your desk and try to figure out how to wring one more sentence out of your weary brain. Learning to do that, however, is essential to maintaining your momentum—once you start writing a book, it’s important to keep it rolling, like Sisyphus and that damn rock.

The key to maintaining momentum is to keep your mouth shut. When you’ve been writing professionally for as long as I have—more than 20 years at this point—one thing you learn to avoid is saying too much about whatever project you’re working on. Talking about what you’re writing diminishes the drive to write: it’s important to hold on to your need to tell the story on the page rather than in conversation, even if the story you’re telling is a nonfiction account of an institution (rather than, say, a harrowing account of your years as an undercover DEA agent). A story is a story and needs to be respected, protected and told in its own good time—the more you say while you’re in the process of discovering the story and how best to tell it, the less urgent your need to sit down every day and put another piece of it on the page (or laptop screen).

But now, for me, that urgency is over. Because my latest book—the soon-to-be-available history of the IMA titled Every Way Possible—is done. Having come to the end of the project, I can truthfully say that I’m glad it’s over. And I wish that it weren’t. There’s nothing more satisfying than writing a book—except maybe reaching the end of writing one. The process that has been both a burden and a pleasure for more than 18 months is finished. I hope you enjoy the fruits of my labors—and those of my co-author Anne Robinson and the many people who helped us. We did our best to write a story that will both educate and entertain. For me, the real joy of writing a book happens when someone reads it. I hope you’ll pick up a copy of Every Way Possible—and when you’re reading it, remember that what you’re reading are the fruits of a lot of labor.

As far as I’m concerned, the hard work paid off: I’m proud to have helped develop, shape and create the first book to attempt to provide a comprehensive (though I would never claim definitive) history of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Let’s do it again in another 125 years.

Photo Courtesy of Lisa French

After writing or co-writing histories of the IMA, the Herron School of Art & Design, and the Indianapolis Art Center, I’ve come to appreciate the fact that the most important resource an organization needs to succeed is people. I know that’s stating the obvious, but it’s worth acknowledging. Without people committed to developing, sustaining and improving an organization (whether a multinational corporation or small not-for-profit) nothing of value will ever get done.

In my former capacity as the visual arts writer for The Indianapolis Star, I covered the IMA extensively, from articles on exhibitions and events to a large, multi-faceted package of articles on the Museum’s most recent facilities expansion. But the ones I enjoyed writing the most were the profiles I did of various IMA staff members—I can attest to the fact that the Museum attracts some of the city’s most talented, skilled and interesting people. What I discovered while researching and writing Every Way Possible, an upcoming book celebrating 125 years of IMA history, was that fact has always been true.

The Museum got its start in 1883 when a small group of people led by nationally known suffragette May Wright Sewall formed the Art Association of Indianapolis. Without Sewall’s tenacity and drive, the group might never have done more than meet occasionally to talk about art; instead, it became the driving force behind the development of the John Herron Art Institute. And that Institute was the result of a $225,000 bequest from local landlord and businessman John Herron, another interesting character in the IMA story. Not known for having a particular interest in art, he nonetheless left the bulk of his estate to the Art Association, with the stipulation that the money be used to build a museum and art school bearing his name. (His niece also became the Herron Museum’s first curator.) The Herron Museum was the precursor to today’s Indianapolis Museum of Art.

So, from the beginning, the institution that would become the IMA was a product of out-of-the-ordinary people with out-of-the-ordinary dreams. Some of the others included:

• Mary Quinn Sullivan (pictured above): An Indianapolis native who went on to study art in London and teach it in New York, Sullivan was the driving force behind the creation of The Gamboliers, a group that helped introduce modern art to the city by purchasing drawings and prints by the likes of Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani. Sullivan went on to become one of the founders of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
• Caroline Marmon Fesler: The daughter of local industrialist and automobile manufacturer Daniel Marmon (Ray Harroun drove a Marmon car to victory in the first Indianapolis 500 race in 1911), she studied painting in Europe. Later, she became a well-known art collector, especially of 20th-century modernist works, many of which she later gave to the Herron Museum—including Grey Hills by her friend, Georgia O’Keeffe. Along with Sullivan, Fesler propelled the Herron Museum into the era of modern art.
• Herbert Krannert: Founder and president of Inland Container Corporation, Krannert agreed to take charge of the Art Association in 1960, at a point when the organization was struggling to stay afloat. Krannert insisted the group reorganize its board and its way of doing business, including creating the position of board chairman—he became the first person to have that title and he held it for 12 years. His tenure culminated in the relocation of the Museum from the Herron campus at 16th and Pennsylvania streets to its current 38th St. and Michigan Road site, and the Art Association’s name change to the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Krannert and his wife Ellnora also gave $3 million to help build the IMA’s first building at the present location—Krannert Pavilion, which opened in 1970.

That’s just a sample of the sorts of people you’ll find in the pages of Every Way Possible when it hits The IMA Store in December. I think you’ll find that spending some time in their company (and that of many others who were—or are—associated with the Museum) is inspiring.

Instead, I want to lament the fact that future historians aren’t going to have the pleasure that I’ve had while researching the upcoming book celebrating 125 years of IMA history, Every Way Possible—the pleasure of opening musty file folders to discover inside letters written decades in the past. If you happen to find good ones—and I did—it’s the closest thing to time traveling that you’re likely to experience.

And among all of the letters I discovered in my research, the very best ones were those written by Kurt Pantzer. He who was an attorney and a member of a number of boards of directors, including that of the Art Association of Indianapolis, the group that later renamed itself the Indianapolis Museum of Art. (He was also an art collector, who became one of the most respected J.M.W. Turner scholars in the world. His collection of Turner works is one of the IMA’s jewels.) But for as busy as he was, Pantzer was a prolific letter writer—he would have a meeting with someone in the morning, and that evening he would write a letter to the same person, detailing what had occurred as a result of their meeting. Pantzer was a skillful writer who clearly liked the idea of creating a record of what he was doing in Indianapolis in the 1950s, ‘60s and early ‘70s.

And what a record he created. The Indiana State Library is home to Pantzer’s papers, and in box after box are expandable file folders filled with correspondence, much of it having to do with the Art Association (and later the IMA). From early discussions about moving the museum off the Herron campus at 16th and Pennsylvania streets to letters detailing his negotiations with members of the Clowes family to convince them to transfer their valuable collection of Old Masters to the museum, Pantzer was meticulous about keeping copies of what he wrote—and copies of the replies he received. His archives are a gold mine of insights into not only the museum’s history, but that of Indianapolis in the mid-20th century.

But Pantzer’s letters are just one example of the first-hand accounts I had the pleasure of reading as I did background work for the book—first-hand accounts that we aren’t creating much anymore, at least not in the same way that the letter writers of the past did. What we’ve gained in speed—from e-mails and faxes to text messages and IMs—we’ve lost in content. Writing a letter by hand forces you to reflect on what you want to say, then word it carefully before committing it to the page. It’s less immediate, but more meditative. And in the hands of someone like Kurt Pantzer, sometimes it becomes a window to the past for people in the future.

One of the joys of creating a book is researching the images that will grace its pages—or its cover. There’s always that moment when—leafing through yet another folder of forgotten photos—your fingers abruptly stop, your eyes refocus and you know—you just know—that you’ve found a picture that just has to be in the book. Or on its cover. For me, that moment arrived one day in the summer of 2007 when I stumbled upon a picture of a trio of boys in a gallery at the Herron Museum, the predecessor of the IMA.

Wearing the sort of clothes that told me the undated image was probably from the 1950s, the three boys stood rapt in front of a bronze sculpture of a pair of young deer seemingly caught in the middle of roughhousing—exactly like a couple of kids at play. For me, the image captured precisely what the museum has striven to do since its earliest day—educate young people (and not-so-young ones, too) about art by showing works apt to intrigue them.

That photo certainly intrigued me. It said more in a single frame than I could have said in a page of text about the wonder that lives inside a museum, the sense of discovery that happens over and over, generation after generation, as each of us encounters that one piece of sculpture, painting, vase, tapestry, photograph—that speaks to us and lets us know that, yes, part of being human is communicating with one another across time, space and cultural differences.

Well, a few weeks ago, we had to pick an image for the cover of Every Way Possible, and I remembered that image, which I had pulled from the file and asked the museum’s photography department to scan into the digital database of images we created for the book project. We pulled it up on a monitor and everyone agreed that it should be a strong contender for the cover. But then… well, Jim Sholly, the book’s designer, found another image of a group of kids in a gallery that I had to agree was equally arresting. So that image became the cover shot.

But the photo of the three boys gazing at the bronze deer still got its day in the sun. It’s prominently displayed inside the book. Look for it when Every Way Possible is released in early October.

Given my experience, I figured helping produce a book about a place I thought I knew pretty well would be easy—especially since in its first incarnation, it was going to consist of 125 vignettes about people, collections, events, and departments that had helped shape the museum’s history. Little did I know what was in store for us. Over the first few months, everything seemed to be going just fine—each writer was assigned topics to research and write about. Like chunks of firewood, the stories began to stack up.

Now, one thing I’ve learned over the years about researching books is to resist tangents, as much as possible. Research is a seductive pastime. In the course of tracking down the information you need, you’re apt to uncover some other information you don’t—letters written by someone who’s central to your research, but who’s writing about subjects that have little or nothing to do with your needs. But a well-written letter is like a drug: it pulls you in, lulls you into thinking you’ve uncovered something vitally interesting, then distracts you from your task at hand. And suddenly you’re off on a tangent—which may well lead you to another, then another… well, you see the drug correlation.

That’s what happened with the IMA project. Each of us involved got seduced by one topic or another, and we all began writing pieces much longer than they were supposed to be. That wasn’t necessarily bad, but it was going to make a book much longer than we had anticipated. By late 2007 it was clear that we needed to rethink the book’s organization: instead of 125 individual stories, we realized that what we needed to do was cover the IMA’s 125-year history chronologically, integrating much of the text we’d written already into a cohesive narrative. But by that time, two of the original writers had finished the work they’d contracted to do, so they left the project.

The remaining two of us then took on the task of weaving together much of the previously written material—and doing more research to fill in the gaps of the larger story we had chosen to tell. This time there was no time to get seduced by research. We had a book to get done, and not a lot of time left to do it. Well, you can guess how the story ends—with some adjustments to the design and production schedules and the help of two very fine editors, we got it done. It will be available in early October. It’s titled Every Way Possible. Watch for it.

Looking back at the moment when I signed on to the project, I have to smile. Did I really think it was going to be as easy as it sounded at the time? Of course not. But I didn’t think it would become as difficult as it did. Yet I’ve enjoyed the entire process. The pleasure of doing a book is that, no matter how much you think you know about the subject when you start, by the time you finish you’ve learned a lot more—not only about the subject, but about yourself. A book pushes and prods you to go beyond what you’ve done before, to develop new skills, to become better professionally and personally. This one certainly did.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. It still does.