Alvin's Educational Technology Blog

I have been looking through all the pictures from our recent trip.  I have a few with some modern art.  The Indianapolis Art Museum did not permit photography of modern art.  It was all right to shoot anything outside the modern gallery, but I had to put the camera away on the fourth floor.

I suppose there are copyright issues.  Most of the works in the modern gallery were definitely created in the last few years.  My favorite was a room with three parallel orange strings of yarn fastened to the floor in the center of the room and stretched to a window where they were taped.  It looked like a beam of light coming in through the window.

In the corner were about a dozen black strings about eight inches apart stretched in parallel lines from the floor to the ceiling.  Every four strings were aligned in perfectly straight lines if viewed from the right angle.  As the view shifted to the right or the left, the row of strings took on the appearance of a solid plane.

These works weren’t complicated, but they weren’t random either.  I don’t appreciate modern “paint-flingers” as much as other types of artists.  I always wonder… did that turn out exactly like the artist planned?  Was that “splash” intended to be just that size and in that spot or did it just happen.

Take a look at the pictures below.  One of them was done by a world famous artist who is paid thousands of dollars for almost anything he does.  The rest of the pieces were done by first graders taking their first art class.

Can you tell which is which? (Click for a closer look.)

Today we continued our tour of Indianapolis by visiting the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The piece above is in the front lawn.  This familiar work is by Robert Indiana and has an interesting copyright story.  Indiana failed to copyright his original painting.  Since his art is basically a word, he lost a copyright case because the courts said he could not copyright a word.

As with most art museums, we were most interested in seeing the contents of the Impressionism room.  You may have heard of Monet, Renoir and Degas.  These are all French artists.  One American woman worked with these French men and she became the most famous American Impressionist painter.  Mary Cassatt spent her whole adult life in or around Paris working with mostly French artists.

Above is a picture I snapped showing a bronze statue by Degas in front of a pastel by Cassatt.

We very nearly didn’t find this work by Cassatt.  It was listed as part of the American Impressionist exhibit.  We went there first.  After two laps around the gallery, we couldn’t find a Cassatt.  We asked the docent in the room for help, but he was more of the “please don’t touch the painting or the wall around the paint” type.  He said he would take a look and he started his way around the huge two-room Impressionist area, reading each name tag as he went.

It is not unusual for Cassatt’s work to be displayed with European artists.  She did live in France for most of her life.  We went to the European section and asked the docent for help.  He took us to the head docent who said he wasn’t sure if the museum had any of Cassatt’s work.  I pointed to her name on the second page of the museum map in the American Impressionist area.  He said he would go over with me and check the area himself.  While this was going on, my wife had decided to try the front information desk.  After the “are you sure we have some of her work” routine, she got the same, “your best bet is the American Impressionist” gallery.

I caught up with the rest of the family as we were all headed back to where we had come from.  I decided to break off from the pack and try a different part of the gallery.  I worked my way to the back of the European Impressionist area and hit pay dirt.  I marked the spot on my map and I headed back to the American Impressionist area to get everyone else.

There were several things that disappointed me with this whole exercise.  How can someone working in rooms filled with famous artwork not take the time to learn what paintings are in the area and what artists painted them?  If I were in one of these rooms for several hours every day I would find out as much about the paintings and painters as possible.  On top of that, why doesn’t IMA have a database of everything they own and where it is hanging?  We were looking for a picture worth several hundred thousand dollars and they did not know where it was.

I don’t like it when people don’t take pride in their work.  Maybe today was an off day at IMA.  I’m willing to give them every benefit of the doubt.  They have a fine museum with many famous and interesting pieces.  I would prefer that they know what they have and where it is.