Letter from the Director and CEO - Fall 2011

Art museums have so many duties—from gathering art, to being stewards of artworks, to engaging the public in conversations about art, to all the associated tasks and functions that accompany these fundamental activities. The Indianapolis Museum of Art has a broader identity than that of most art museums by virtue of the scale of its 152-acre main campus, its commitment to the design arts and the natural environment evidenced by the care of historic properties and gardens including Miller House and Oldfields, and its being the headquarters of independent cinema and culturally adventurous fare in Central Indiana.

Responsibly maintaining and programming all of these properties and facilities triggers an even more basic obligation, which is to ensure that we are at the forefront of research in multiple areas. We are not first, and foremost, a tourist destination. We are an educational institution that derives its support in proportion to the caliber of our offerings and our relevance to multiple constituencies. Rather than indexing our collections and programs to popular demand, we seek to engage visitors in what we believe to be essential, non-commercial offerings that contribute to scholarship, augment our public’s understanding of the world around us, and build the reputation of Indianapolis as a cultural center essential to residents and visitors alike.

We are a campus that blends a university-like commitment to research with a desire to engage the public in a meaningful dialog about art, nature and design.

Much of this fall’s activities center around improvements to our campus—including the Four Seasons Garden restoration, the inauguration of Mary Miss’s FLOW: Can You See the River?, the new visiondivision installation in 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, and the conservation and reinstallation of Robert Indiana’s 0–9 in the Alliance Sculpture Terrace. In the current issue we highlight one component of this research focus: IMA Lab. The emergence of IMA Lab as an international force extends the reach of IMA’s technical expertise from impacting local audiences to making a difference in major museums around the globe.

Our pioneering efforts in building an internationally renowned technology team has yielded three key outcomes: we are now routinely described as a global thought leader for museums and technology; we have established an earned income stream larger than admissions or merchandising income alone can provide on a sustained basis; and most importantly, we are transforming IMA’s own ability to present its collections and programs to the widest possible audience locally and nationally. The entrepreneurial instinct at IMA always begins with asking how we can further our mission while looking for new kinds of support, and IMA Labs represents the best possible example we could aspire to. From devising new ways of fostering transparency through the Web, to inventing a new platform for scholarly publishing online, to solving problems associated with mobile computing for museums, to creating and operating the leading video resource about art on the Web, IMA Labs is a source of pride to our Board and staff alike—and a harbinger of a creative, practical, and leading-edge IMA that our members and supporters can expect for the foreseeable future.