And perhaps this is why we began a series of articles in the IMA’s magazine on the provenance of important works in the Museum’s collection, written by Annette Schlagenhauff. As the IMA’s Associate Curator for Research, Annette has spent years tracing the paths of works of art from the artists’ hands to the walls of the IMA. The stories are fascinating and not without moral ambiguities and missing pieces.

Landscape at Saint-Rémy (Enclosed Field with Peasant)

The fall issue of the magazine features the IMA’s Landscape at Saint-Rémy (Enclosed Field with Peasant) by Vincent van Gogh. As one of the most important and valuable works in the Museum’s collection, Annette peers beyond the paint into the 120 year life of the painting. Painted in southern France in 1889, its early history is well documented, however, during the time of Nazi regime power when many of Europe’s art collections were in jeopardy, its provenance is spotty. Did Landscape at Saint-Rémy leave Europe legitimately or was it tied up in the Nazi’s campaign of looting Jewish art collections?

[This is why the magazine should be online. I could link to the rest of the story here and you could happily finish reading. Soon enough!]

Long story short, papers found in the New York Public Library confirmed that the painting left Europe still in the family of the original owners and had been consigned to a New York-based art dealer when arriving in the United States. The IMA can breath a sigh of relief and say that the provenance of the Van Gogh is clear.

But what would have happened if the provenance was not clear? Should research suggest the name of a possible legitimate owner, the IMA is obligated to attempt to contact them to discover more. Many paintings in the IMA’s collection have gaps in their provenance in the critical years of 1933-1945. Per the American Association of Museums (AAM) and the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) guidelines, the Museum posts these works on the Nazi-era Provenance Internet Portal and the IMA Web site–provenance research project. The facts unique to each painting help determine the course of action. (More here)

I think there are more than a few of us who would like Annette’s captivating, Nancy Drew-like sleuth job. No doubt it’s nerve wracking, hard work. In the winter issue of the magazine, and online, you’ll be able to join Annette in her journey to discover the past of the Dutch painting Valkhof at Nijmegen by Aelbert Cuyp. I see National Geographic documentaries in her future.

The Valkhof at Nijmegen

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Come to the IMA on October 3 or 23 to see The Rape of Europa in The Toby. This is an amazing opportunity to watch a documentary film that examines Nazi looting of the great museums and private art collections of Europe in an attempt to obliterate cultural identities. The film’s epic scope explores a descendant of painter Gustav Klmit’s flight to regain a portrait of her aunt, Louvre staff members who packed and moved 400,000 pieces of art as the Nazis advanced, and the “Monuments Men” who plumbed salt mines to recover stolen art after the war. You’ll be faced with the question: “Which is of more value: a work of art or a human life?”

Preview The Rape of Europa below and get your tickets now.

Glasvegas Album Cover - Amazon.com

I care about wordplay. I also care about a band name. Formative case in point, the instant the young Phil learned the proper way to spell beetle, he realized that the band that sang Help to him before bed every night had cleverly altered the spelling of their name to reflect a basic musical idea. Simple, I know, but I remember getting home from school, my heart and stomach about to implode from crushing urgency, and asking the coolest person in the world, “Mom, who else knows about this?”

Luckily, years of schooling didn’t ruin me and I’m still as easy to please as the playfully ignorant kid amused by simple puns. However, years of English and Math classes have made slightly more sophisticated instances of cleverness understandable, and for that I’m thankful. For example, consider a recent IMA acquisition called Möbius Ship, by Tim Hawkinson. Tim’s demonstration of clever wood-play is seriously clever. I like it so much that I hike up to the third floor and check out this monstrous nautical nemesis at least once a week. And, whenever I namedrop hot art at the museum, you know I’m like, “Mobius Ship, get it?”

So, take all that and consider a band from Scotland, with a clever name, that has a song called S.A.D. Light, and whose album cover is a black and white image inspired by Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Point in case, the eponymous Glasvegas album is totally blowing my mind. I mean, these guys and gal from Glasgow are dominating my ears. I’ve spent the last week listening to their perfect poppy-scot-drone-bubblegum tunes at all of my listening stations and wishing they were playing on everything capable of sound reproduction as I travel on each of my daily relocations. Glasvegas, I’m moved.

And Glasvegas, I’m moved not only by your music, which totally rules, but also because of the possibility of a little kid sitting in the back seat of their hip Mom’s Mazda 5 and listening to you wail while they wonder if any of the other kids think the swirly things on your album cover look kind of like music clouds, whatever music clouds are. And then, maybe ten years later, after  feeling a little embarrassed by the surprise of seeing Starry Night in an art text book, that same kid goes home and immediately asks the least cool person in the world, “Mom, why didn’t you tell me about this?

Album in stores.

A lot of times when people find out I work at the IMA they assume I have an art background or have at least taken one Art History class. This is, in fact, not true. I do remember making a paper mache’ fish when at the IMA in the summer when I was about 7, at some of our Summer Art classes.

I began collecting art about 6 years ago when I got out of college and didn’t know what to do with all my free time now that I was in the “real world.” I started going to Goodwill, garage sales, thrift stores, and other places I could actually afford and started picking up art that makes me smile. It doesn’t mean I’m not a great art collector, it means I’m a treasure hunter. After all, how great is it that you can find treasures anywhere, like IMA’s new collection of Weegee photos that a couple of ladies found in a trunk at a Kentucky yard sale?

People also ask what my favorite kind of art is and if you walked into my house you’d realize it’s an eclectic mix, similar to my movie collection, my taste in music – heck, even my friends. Right inside the front door, before you head up the stairs, is a canvas reproduction on “American Gothic.”

I really love that you don’t have to just have posters anymore to see your favorite reproductions. It’s more affordable – and more fun – to do a little creative searching and find works on canvas, or pick up works at art fairs, even if you can only buy their work on greeting cards to start with.

In one corner of my living room, I have two posters I’ve framed, four portraits that I bought from the IMA’s former Better Than New Shop, and an embroidered “Be Happy” piece I bought at Goodwill because it was colorful and obviously had a positive message.

On the bookcase in that corner are housed hundreds upon hundreds of pictures I’ve placed in photo albums, being as that I’m an amateur photographer in my own mind. (Basically I’ve captured all the moments that prevent me and most of my friends from ever running for public office.) There’s also a framed photo of my Grandpa Ray, who has a piece in my collection as well. When he passed away the one thing I wanted from his house was a small “sculpture” he had on top of his TV of a dog chasing a raccoon up a branch, although my witty grandpa painted the dog to look like a beagle, which he raised as hunting dogs. It sits on top of my TV stand now reminding me of his humor and the pencil sketches of owls and funny cowboys he’d draw for me.

Perhaps Craig Miller wants to talk to me about Design? Well, okay so maybe I just assembled the entertainment center I bought at Wal-Mart, but our Exhibits guys might be surprised to learn I’m pretty handy with a hammer and a glue gun. I did, however, come up with this clever use of cd covers to display my crazy taste in music and art, and these are a great conversation piece.

Also on top of this elaborate entertainment center sits Madamoo Foo Foo. She’s a sculpture I bought from a fabulous gay couple when I was out treasure hunting one day, and they insisted if I bought her I keep her given name. Deal.

I will also beat you to it and poke fun at myself for the YouTube video the Nugget Factory made of me before I lost a bit of weight and found my real identity at the museum, when I said “I like this whole wall!” like a 4 year old child for my family and boyfriend to now constantly tease me about.

I created a whole wall of things I love that you see as soon as you walk in my front door, which includes “Boy in Blue” by Modigliani, which is in the IMA’s permanent collection.

One day I decided to name him Jasper, and it’s made me smile ever since. Then there are my Van Gogh classics, as well as a very special picture made by my mother when she was in high school and still an artist known as Judy Ray.

I love it. In my spare room I have my most “vintage” piece, a work my father bought at Penrod, on the IMA’s campus, in 1973. Fantastic.

Perhaps my strangest works featured together, maybe because I can’t seem to get it just right, is in my bedroom. Yes, I’m allowing you in to see where some type of magic supposedly happens. Above my bed hangs an old Stone Temple Pilots poster I had framed back in high school, along with my most expensive piece of artwork, a lithograph from the artist Sunol Alvar.

My parent’s house is full of Alvar that I plan to inherit someday, and this was a Christmas gift from them 2 years ago. She has moved around in my room but I found on this wall I can see her as soon as I wake up, and it makes me happy. Please excuse the folded clothes in the picture as it was laundry day, but look Ma, I made my bed.

My office is full of toys and wonders as well, featuring an “Office Sweet Office” poster that looks embroidered as an homage to Home Sweet Home. One of my coworkers said last week “I wonder what it’s like to live in your head for a day.” Now you know what it’s like to live in my own museum. What kind of artwork do you display in your home that tells your story?

I love art.

I am a person typically defined by what I hate….I hate reading, I hate obnoxious people, I hate Jessica Alba (not for the reason you would think), (most) chick flicks, social inequality, people who ignore problems instead of solve them, etc. I am all over the place. From the trivial to social issues, I ALWAYS have an opinion. For better or worse. So how could I love something as big and varied as art?

I am an art history graduate from the Herron School of Art here in Indy and went there because I desperately wanted to understand the motivations of artists. I studied art on my own before that, mostly the fan favorites, van Gogh, Monet, Cassatt and the like. As a 16 year old, hiding out in her room, reading van Gogh’s letters I thought I would never encounter another human being with such powerful insight and fell in love with that dreamy, brooding artist-type. So, not knowing where it would lead, I enrolled in an art history program and began taking classes under the assumption that art was defined by feeling. Soon I discovered the Renaissance, and was convinced that art was about thinking, learning and technical skill. Eventually I found myself in a much more balanced place. Now I find that I love art, its ability to provoke and inspire. Sounds cheesy, but it is true. I love it when art infuriates me, or challenges me, but I also love seeing something I love even when I can’t say why.

Sometimes the art world makes us feel like it is not okay to just look and think on our own terms. That we need something else that they gave us. Well, I would argue that your eyes are the perfect tool! That’s not to say, though, that you can’t benefit from a little curatorial TLC. Think about what they do all day long…do you know? They spend time doing research, writing labels, organizing exhibitions. Always thinking about the art they are most passionate about. So they know A LOT about it, right? But you have something they don’t. You will walk up to a work of art unfettered by all of this knowledge. Pros and cons. It is all about pros and cons.

Teaching a course at a local community college this semester has given me great insight into where the rest of the world is within the realm of art appreciation. (That’s another thing that happens over time, you forget what is what like not to be packed with facts, names, dates, how to correctly pronounce french titles, etc.) I am grateful to my students for challenging me to define art in my own words and help them find new definitions, too. I feel many of them did. And I hope the work that the Nugget Factory does also contributes to continually better definitions of art for you. It is so much harder to feel like I am making a difference as a nugget, being behind a computer instead in front of a student group or up in a gallery seeing people come to a new realization.

So I will offer you a couple of nuggets that I hope contribute to your artistic evolution:

• Look! Don’t just read. Looking, for longer than 10 seconds, is the most useful, yet overlooked thing an art viewer can do.
• Question authority. I live my life by this mantra (ask Daniel) and art appreciation is no different. Experts are useful but they can’t tell you why something is so beautiful it makes you want to cry and throw up. You have to look inside yourself for that answer.
• Suppress the shame of not already knowing stuff. We all feel it. How do you pronounce that name? What is encaustic? Will they think less of me for asking these questions? The answer is brutal. They might. But part of your personal growth has to be not caring. Loving art is more important than being judged by others.
• Watch IMA videos. It might feel like a shameless plug, and in part it is. But on the flip side, we work hard to make things that will give you a peek into what the experts know, give you access to artists and help you find a place to hook in to art you’ve never seen before.

So, there you have it. I love art because it is simultaneously easy and difficult. There is no one-size-fits-all definition of art which gives each of us great power, and with great power comes great responsibility. Use it wisely.

But this year I’d like to ask you to lend me a hand in taking care of the IMA’s outdoor sculpture. No, no, I’m not talking about actually getting you to join me in doing the labor, but I’d like to ask you to participate in a kind of experiment in documenting some of the sculpture on the grounds – that is to say make Wikipedia entries and upload some pictures of the IMA’s sculptures. If you don’t’ already know, anyone can make Wikipedia entries!

This idea came out of the fact that I’ve been interested in the number of existing Wikipedia entrances written about individual works of art: for example Van Gogh’s Potato Eaters and Damien Hirst’s, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. Also there are good entries about two artists who have sculptures on our grounds, Barbara Hepworth and Mark di Suvero (including a note that di Suvero’s Snowplow is at the IMA), but I can’t find an entry for any individual works in the museum’s collection; so let’s start with the outdoor sculpture.

Maybe at this point you’re asking yourself why someone here just doesn’t make entries for the IMA collection. Well, I’ve thought about it some and decided against doing it myself because I work here and it might be a conflict of interest. See this article in the New York Times for a bit of rational, Seeing Corporate Fingerprints in Wikipedia Edits.

Or maybe you’re thinking to yourself that there’s got to be something in it for you before you consider taking the job. And maybe there is. Certainly, I’m going to be stoked to see even one entry in Wikipedia about our outdoor sculptures. So as far as payment, I can offer to announce your work on this blog. Admittedly, the payment is minor but the work is great.

So, what do you think? With individual entries of the sculptures and pictures uploaded into the galleries, we could begin gathering information about our sculptures. And if you had pictures to upload, they uploaded to the IMA’s Flickr Pool. Not only would I think this is just plain cool, but it would be helpful because we could start keeping a kind of public record of our pieces with notes to their condition.

I think this could be the cleverest thing going on this summer, but perhaps I’m out on a limb here and no one will even do one.

What do you think, you want to help?