The IU Art Museum’s 75th year is more than an anniversary.
“We wanted to look at the year not just as an anniversary, but also as a birthday, because birthdays are more exciting than anniversaries,” said Abe Morris, manager of public relations and marketing for the museum.
In order to celebrate this year in the museum’s history, Morris said the museum will invite fresh exhibitions — some of which are unlike any shown before, such as rain-activated artwork — and some of more traditional modes.
On April 12, IUAM will be host to a birthday party featuring swing dancing, poetry readings and other cross-arts collaborations.
Morris said he is excited for the arrival of work by Vic Muniz, a popular contemporary artist, this fall.
Muniz’s pieces will come to the museum as part of a traveling exhibition from Atlanta and will move on to Europe following the show here.
“Vic is a very successful contemporary artist, and his stuff is really amazing,” Morris said. “The museum hasn’t done a lot of contemporary art shows in recent times, so it’s kind of a renewed interest in contemporary art and bringing contemporary art to Indiana University.”
Last year’s change in directorship at the museum added another level of anticipation to the 75th year, Morris said.
“Everybody’s excited about it,” he said. “It’s certainly an opportunity to attract some greater attention to the museum and to do some fun things that we haven’t always traditionally done. We’ve also gotten a new director for the first time in almost 30 years. Those two things together have created some really exciting momentum here.”
Nan Brewer, curator of works on paper, said she hopes the year invites greater attention to the collections and the significance of the museum as a cultural space.
“I hope it brings more attention to the museum’s activity and its collection — maybe for people who weren’t as aware of the museum — but also of its important legacy in terms of the history of the campus,” Brewer said.
Another major undertaking at the museum is the initiation of the “Rainworks” project, a group of art designs that are invisible when dry but appear fully when water hits them. The inspiration to bring this mode of art to Bloomington came after an online search.
“This ‘Rainworks’ project is really going to be fun and exciting — it’s something that’s also a little bit more modern,” Morris said.
Founder Peregrine Church will visit IU to install “Rainworks” outside of the museum and will show others how to create “Rainwork” images for themselves during workshops at the School of Fine Arts and the Monroe County Public Library’s teen section.
The project will not just be inward-facing. There are tentative plans to spread “Rainworks” around the city, Morris said.
“It should be a fun project that brings art outside of the museum and takes it into the community as well,” Morris said.
Along with the creation of a new collections guide for the museum, Morris said the space hopes to build a vast online presence this year.
“We’re doing a few other things, such as launching an online website that is going to share 750 works online for the first time — the greatest hits of the museum,” Morris said. “That’s an initiative that can possibly expand in the future. It will be the best web presence for our collection online that has ever existed.”
This effort falls in line with the desire to show how far the influence of the museum can reach, Morris said.
“It’s something that we’ve not had in recent years, something that people from all over the world can tap into and see the great art we have in this building,” Morris said. “So that’s something else we’re trying to do to be outward-facing and try to expand awareness.”
