WFIU: Angles from the IU Art Museum Podcast

All year, IU's art museum has been celebrating its 75th birthday. This week, the occasion was toasted by a stunning act of philanthropy.

It was hoped Light Totem would serve to promote the art museum, and perhaps offer the excuse for an after-dinner stroll. Expectations were quickly exceeded.

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The IU Art Museum kicks off its Coffeehouse Nights series with plenty of culture and caffeine

Perle Fine was on the vanguard of American art in the 40s and 50s. Her work belongs to the nation's flagship art collections. So why don't you know her name?

Artworks' Adam Schwartz attends a One-Hour Exhibition of rarely-seen chiaroscuro woodcuts at the IU Art Museum.

The Iranian posters on view at the IU Art Museum reveal how "a democratic revolution was Islamized through a wide range of discursive and visual tools."

The 110-foot high triangular, sky-lit atrium is the signature of the I.M. Pei structure, completed in 1982. Adding to the dramatic impact of the museum's glass ceiling is the dynamic shadow pattern its support grid casts across the atrium’s angular interior over the course of the day. But the ceiling has had maintenance issues for years.

Giving Back to Africa is dedicated to making a long-term investment in educating young people in the central African country, formerly known as Zaire. Giving cameras to the children at PAID was a youth-empowerment initiative directly in line with the organization's mission.

Whether partying or walking down the street, Andy negotiated his entire existence through the lens. Having shot over 150,000 black-and-white negatives between 1976 and his death in 1987, Andy’s pictures serve as a visual diary of each day, whether the subject is a movie star, a hockey game, or a trashcan—all of which turn up here.

The show links two distinct places through the spirituality that permeates daily life in both lands. On view are the spoon-like utensils with which women in Mongolia throw aspersions of milk to the four directions every morning. The thangkas on display often show smoke damage from having been hung in tents lit with yak-butter lamps.

African Reinventions: Reused Materials in Popular Culture presents strictly defined art objects—such as jewelry, sculpture and painting—fashioned from discarded materials, while demonstrating how artistry, in combination with resourcefulness, can bring new life to utilitarian objects.

Ahhh… summer! A time when life in a college town slows down a little, and year-round residents might be open to something different. Add to that equation a group of arts organizations looking to gain traction with locals and summer visitors and voilà! It’s the Alliance of Bloomington Museums’ Summer Quest, now in its second year.

Since 1961, Robert Laurent’s Birth of Venus fountain has been the centerpiece of Showalter Plaza, the artistic core of Indiana University’s Bloomington campus. It’s a celebratory, modernist take on a classical subject that brings to mind Paul Manship’s Prometheus at New York’s Rockefeller Center skating rink.

In Jeremy Sweet’s carnivalesque work, Mayan masks brush shoulders with King Kong and Annie Oakley. Sweet’s freewheeling vernacular stands in stark contrast to the cryptic language spoken in William McMahan's work. McMahan’s “Figure Studies” inhabit the mysterious interstices between flora and fauna, figure and ground.

Although their work looks nothing alike, photographer June Yong Lee and painter Nishiki Tayui are both expatriates from the Far East who have lived in the US for about a decade. Both have spent their time in Bloomington making art that grapples with cultural and ethnic identity.

Although disparate in terms of form, works by Arthur Liou, Barry Gealt, and Osamu James Nakagawa emerged from the artists’ philosophical and personal kinship.

When you wander into an exhibition of contemporary art these days, it might occur to you to ask, where have all the paintings gone? The dearth of the longtime mainstay of the visual arts in the current scene prompted a recent discussion at the IU Art Museum. The triennial show of faculty art set the stage for "Painting: Dead or Alive?"

News about the way the economic downturn is affecting our fellow citizens can seem abstract if it’s not happening in our own backyard. In the 1930s, policy makers facing the same challenge found a way to tackle it—through photography.

During the month of September, they’ll be opening their doors for an evening of coffee, snacks, music, and of course art. WFIU's David Wood spoke with Josie Larimer, the special events coordinator at the IU Art Museum about their upcoming Coffeehouse Nights!

The Indiana University Art Museum celebrates Limestone Month with four rare watercolor paintings by noted Hoosier artist, Otto Stark.

An exhibition of fifteen prints by the internationally renowned photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto is currently on view at the Indiana University Art Museum in Bloomington. A fixture of the contemporary art scene for more than three decades, Sugimoto's photography has recently surfaced in the pop music world as well, as the cover image of U2's newest album, No Line on the Horizon. WFIU's Yaël Ksander spoke with curator, Nan Brewer.

Straddling that threshold between art and nature was Albert R. Valentien, a Cincinnati native who, from the age of nineteen, had specialized in floral decoration for the city's world-renowned Rookwood Pottery. Valentien's works are on display as part of "Plant Portraits: The California Legacy of A.R. Valentien." WFIU's Yaël Ksander has more.

Max Beckman’s “Hope Family Portrait”

An exhibition featuring contemporary versions of the ritual designs known as “Aepan.”

IU Press has recently published “Masterworks from the IU Art Museum,” a catalog of objects representing the full range of the museum’s collection, along with essays by its curators. WFIU’s Yael Ksander speaks with several of those involved in the publication.

WFIU’s Yael Ksander speaks with Leo Mazow and Nan Brewer about the traveling exhibition, Shallow Creek: Thomas Hart Benton and American Waterways.

IU Press has recently published “Masterworks from the IU Art Museum,” a catalog of objects representing the full range of the museum’s collection, along with essays by its curators. WFIU’s Yael Ksander speaks with several of those involved in the publication.

IU Press has recently published “Masterworks from the IU Art Museum,” a catalog of objects representing the full range of the museum’s collection, along with essays by its curators. WFIU’s Yael Ksander speaks with several of those involved in the publication.

Margaret Contompasis describes the restoration of two well-known sculptures on the Indiana University Campus with WFIU’s Yael Ksander.

IU Dept of Theatre Professor Robert Shakespeare talks about his new installation at the IU Art Museum in celebration of the museum’s 25th anniversary.

Museum Curator of Western Art after 1800, Jenny McComas talks about the museum’s ongoing research into the provenance, or ownership history, of items in the permanent collection

Curator Diane Pelrine talks about the special exhibition at the IU Art Museum, “Architecture: Real and Imagined.”

Jeffrey Wolin, Professor of Photography in the IU Hope School of Fine Arts, gives an unflinching account of fifty men and women who fought and lived the war in Vietnam.

Curator Jenny McComas talks about a special loan of a recently discovered painting by French Romantic master Eugene Delacroix.

Curator Diane Pelrine talks about “African Art Today,” a new exhibition of works by Tijani Sitou and Kalidou Sy at the IU Art Museum.

Adelheid Gealt, Director of the IU Art Museum talks about 18th century Venetian master Domenico Tiepolo. His New Testament cycle is the subject of a book by Gealt and scholar George Knox, as well as a special exhibition at the IU Art Museum.

For Women’s History Month, Adelheid Gealt, Director of the IU Art Museum talks about women in art.

Museum Curator of Education and Tour Coordinator Joanne Cross talk about an exhibition of art by students from the Monroe County Community School Corporation.

Photographer Tyagan Miller talks about his work “Covenant: Scenes from an African American Church”.

Museum Curator of Works on Paper Nanette Brewer talks about a new work in the museum’s collection by John Wilson, and a new website module focusing on the museum’s collection of African American Art.

Faculty artists Edward Bernstein, Betsy Stirratt, and Rowland Ricketts talk about their work in the upcoming special exhibition at the IU Art Museum.

Nanette Brewer, Indiana University Art Museum Curator of Works on Paper previews a “New in the Gallery” exhbition of British Watercolors from the museum’s collection.

Adelheid Gealt, Director of the Indiana University Art Museum and Curator of Western Art Before 1800 talks about 16th century Burgundian master Felipe Vigarny’s “The Visitation.”