Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

One thing that I find interesting about writing for this blog is that I really have no idea what or even who is going to proceed or follow me. I get a date on the calendar that my post is going to go up, and that’s about it. So I was surprised to find out that Meg was so very interested in crunching numbers because today I’m writing about how I take care of our “Numbers 0-9,” by Robert Indiana. A marketing ploy, serendipity, coincidence, or the pervasiveness of numerality: you decide.

Anyway, I’m going to tell you how I help to keep our numbers clean and looking good (I get lots of help). For the past few years I’ve invited IMA summer interns working in other departments to help me and the conservation interns wash the “Numbers” (you can go here to Flickr to see a ton of images of our sculptures and Indiana’s various versions of the same sculpture on exhibit around the world).

Washing these 8 foot tall painted aluminum artworks is a fair amount of work, even when you have the good help I had. It’s a fairly straight-forward process to clean the sculptures: we simply wash them gently with soap (I use Orvus ) and water. Really, that’s it, some soap and water, a few ladders and lots of me acting like Mr. Miyagi and demanding perfect motions when doing the work.

Beyond the actual work it’s also a time when I can provide a real example of some of the maintenance we complete on the outdoor sculptures to interns in the other departments. After all (and this number is for Meg), there are over 50 artworks scattered throughout the IMA’s grounds, and soon to be a lot more over in the 100 Acres.

There are two other things that I wanted to mention, one is that you can go here and see a drawing by Robert Indiana that shows what the organization of the numbers meant to him and why we arranged them so. I’m always intrigued by this notion that just by putting two numbers together you can achieve a kind off greater meaning.
The second thing I wanted to mention is the fine Wikipedia article that Jasmine made about the numbers this spring. I have it on good word that invitations for Lunch with the IMA’s director have been sent out to the 5 that made Wikipedia articles of IMA sculptures. I’ve been digging around to see if others have been made, but haven’t found any. Speaking of that, I hope our IT department doesn’t check how many times a day I look at Wikipedia on this computer….

Meet Christina Gentry; she’s the first – and so far the only – person to take me up on my offer to have lunch at Pucks with the IMA’s director, Max Anderson, for making a Wikipedia article about one of the IMA’s outdoor sculptures. As for TED, I’ll get to that later.

First check out Christina’s Wikipedia article on the Sutphin Fountain, which even has a link to a set of pictures of the fountain on Flickr.com. Nice work, Christina!

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Well it has been quite a week! Since my last post there has been all kinds of attention being paid to IMA technology efforts. Richard is still flying high on the blogosphere success of his Wikipedia hijinks, journalists have been in touch with us and Daniel and I even passed on our sage wisdom to a group of IUPUI Museum Studies students last Thursday night. All in all, it feels great to be in conversation with a variety of different audiences and honestly, it feels good to have fans! Though, we have really only just begun.

I think it should be a Nugget Factory goal to someday inspire the same fervent fandom that generated the film project Fanboys.

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Well, that went off with a resounding and hushed thud. I was sure my last blog entry would garner heaps of new Wikipedia entries, a personal lunch celebration from the IMA’s Director, and an interview on the Today Show; but instead I got some publicity from other bloggers.

Though I appreciate the pub, I would have preferred people take me up on the idea of creating Wikipedia entries about IMA outdoor sculptures. And, no, I’m not crazy enough to think we would have an IMA wikimarathon to rival the art wikimarathon, but I really thought my post would have generated at least one entry by now.

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I’m glad to have Irvin’s report that clearly shows spring is on its way and to know that in a matter of weeks the sky won’t be that low, oppressive grey. This means soon I’ll be working on the outdoor sculpture – from washing, cleaning, and waxing to the occasional, necessary repair. You may have seen some of the conservation work we’ve done on the IMA’s famous LOVE sculpture in this youtube video.

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!

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