Angles at the IU Art Museum

IU’s campus is full of beauty, both natural and man-made.

The IU Art Museum is hard to miss. Though the entrance to the museum, located on Seventh Street near the IU Auditorium, is swallowed by the museum’s walls, while a 70-foot-tall light tower and a 21-foot-tall circular red statue stand guard out front.

The museum
The IU Art Museum was founded in 1941, and its current building was dedicated in 1982. The ceiling of the atrium is made out of glass triangles — a signature of famous architect I.M. Pei, whose company was commissioned to design the building in 1973.
The museum serves as a place to learn for a wide variety of people — from college to elementary students — through both serious study and casual browsing.

The museum has about 40,000 pieces of art from around the world and throughout history, including works from ancient Greece and Egypt, ancient and modern Japan, China, Tibet, Europe, the Americas and Africa.

Prominent artists on display at the museum include Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso. The museum also sometimes features works from the professors at the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts students.

The Indiana Arc
The red aluminum statue outside the museum is called the “Indiana Arc.” It was designed by Charles O. Perry and was placed there in 1995. The statue honors Thomas and Ellen Ehrlich. Thomas Ehrlich was IU’s 15th president.

On his Web site, Perry says he is interested in complex mathematical curves.
Another one of his pieces, “Continuum,” stands in front of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

The light pole
The Light Totem was designed by Theatre and Drama Professor Robert Shakespeare and put up in 2007 to mark the 25th anniversary of the museum building’s dedication.
The light pole, which normally turns on at dusk, lights up part of the front wall with an array of color — turning the wall itself into a work of art. The pole was designed to be energy-efficient.