The last “Art and a Movie” event of this academic year took place Sunday. Gealt gave the preceding talk, taking attendees through her life experience within the art world, some of her best memories and her career at the museum.
Nan Brewer, one of the museum’s curators and coordinator for the “Art and a Movie” series, gave Gealt’s introduction. She discussed Gealt’s rise from assistant to registrar to curator to director and took a moment to show how much Gealt has touched her.
“I am kind of delighted to say that I have been able to spend my museum career working under Heidi,” ?Brewer said.
Gealt said she is always humbled to speak to the IU Art Museum community.
“Thank you Nan, and thank you to the whole art museum staff,” Gealt said. “I am honored for all of you to be here. I have no prepared speech; I figured I’d just tell a bunch of stories.”
The lecture began with a look into what the film patrons would see at IU Cinema after the talk, a documentary on the National Gallery ?in London.
Part of the talk focused on Gealt’s beginnings as an art enthusiast. Gealt said she is an immigrant — her family came over from Germany and settled in Dayton, Ohio, when she was young.
During their childhood, Gealt said she and her sister were obsessed with horses. The two would draw, read about and copy illustrations of horses whenever they could. When they were teenagers, they took a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“I went through this one quarter and I saw this ?painting, these big dappled stallions rearing up and people trying to manage these giant percherons,” Gealt said. “Oh my God, this is the best horse painting I’ve ever seen. My sister and I are looking at this piece by Rosa Bonheur, one of the great animal painters of the 19th century.”
This was not the last time Gealt saw the Bonheur work. Gealt said Henry Hope, the first IU Art Museum director, managed to bring the piece to the museum before the historic building was ?constructed.
Gealt said the massive piece sat alongside the works of other high-profile artists in the IU Auditorium building as part of Hope’s mission during his time as director.
“He brought a blockbuster,” Gealt said. “It’d be a blockbuster today. It was certainly a blockbuster by those standards, right here to Indiana University.”
Gealt then took patrons through her journey to the directorship. She said she began by walking into the office of her predecessor, Thomas Solley, looking like “a hippie” with Daisy Mae shorts, long hair and no makeup.
Solley took a chance on Gealt, making her first assistant registrar then eventually curator of drawings. Gealt said the first major project Solley assigned was an examination of the work of Domenico Tiepolo, an artist Gealt has now published 10 works about.
Gealt said she became director in 1979, when Solley handed her a printout from an adding machine and wished her luck.
“When you get my age, you start looking back and thinking your life really does unfold like a novel,” Gealt said. “It’s really weird.”
