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!