LOVE is over 50 years old

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LOVE outside at the IMA in the early years

Robert Indiana was born in 1928 as Robert Clark. His first use of the stacked four letters of “LOVE” was created for a Christmas card in 1964 for the New York Museum of Modern Art. This design creation led to the LOVE sculpture constructed of Cor-ten steel in 1970. LOVE was first put on display at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. It made the rounds of several American cities for five years until it returned to the IMA. After needed restoration was performed due to weathering of the steel, it is now displayed inside the museum building to protect it from the elements.

Standing in front of the LOVE sculpture will give you a feel for the size of the letters

Remember 8 cent stamps?

The design was also the inspiration of a USPS 8 cent stamp in 1973. Countless copies of the statue were made and sold over the years, however Robert Indiana had failed to copyright his design, thus he did not reap the benefits.

Even with masks we liked the Van Gogh show

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Masks were required for admittance to the Van Gogh experience at Newfields 4th floor gallery called The Lume. We went this week, and even with masks we enjoyed ourselves immensely. You can read another post about our adventure here.

Bench seating in the gallery enabled us to sit as long as we wanted.

Sher checking out the Van Gogh bedroom table, right from the painting!

While insuring social distancing we dropped our masks for this photo op in the Van Gogh bedroom

A highlight was seeing up close and personal Van Gogh’s painting “Sheaves of Wheat”, 1890

We had fun at The Lume: Van Gogh experience at Newfields Indy

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There was more than the digital presentations at the Van Gogh experience at The Lume. An activity room was set up with a few things to do. One was an interesting device that took a picture of your face, then offered you your choice of different Van Gogh styles.

Sher on left, Maj on right, both ala Vincent van Gogh styles

Sher and I both tried this “activity”. Hopefully they will soon email the digital copies to us, as was promised when we picked our style.  Our pictures were displayed prominently on the wall for a time.

Indianapolis Newfields The Lume: Van Gogh experience

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Today we thought we’d share some more of the visual displays at The Lume: Van Gogh interactive show at Newfields (formerly Indianapolis Museum of Art). This is the link to yesterday’s post.

The video above is a short one, but it does give a real flavor of the types of visuals that were presented in the digital presentation. This is one of Van Gogh’s self portraits.

Self portraits by Vincent van Gogh

Many of the panels in the presentation were of the many portraits that Van Gogh painted, both self portraits and of other people. He was very prolific with his portraiture works. The one above with the straw hat was painted in 1887.

His painting of his bedroom in Arles, France

A life size portrayal of his bedroom

Sher checking out the table in the painting!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The whole experience is not an end all biography of Van Gogh. Several panels provide short paragraphs similar to chapter titles, preceding examples of his works in the referenced time frame. There are lots of other sources of detailed information, including detailed descriptions/stories about specific paintings. It is a marvelous visual and auditory experience, and in our opinion a wonderful way to spend an afternoon at the museum.

 

The Lume: Van Gogh

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We thoroughly enjoyed and were enthralled with our adventure today at The Lume Van Gogh interactive display at Newfield’s Indianapolis. The word “display” is woefully inaccurate in describing the 30,000 square feet (covering the entire fourth floor of the Museum) immersive event. One hundred and fifty projectors show the visuals on the walls and floors of the rooms, transforming two dimensional paintings into three dimensional experiences.

Notice the scale: the dark figures are people walking through the gallery

Each video segment was accompanied by intrinsically beautiful musical pieces. There were strategically placed benches on each of four sides of the building columns. We found a bench with a good view of two different gallery rooms. Note that the life history of Van Gogh was presented, focusing on the different phases of his painting creations.

The video above, of a Dutch landscape, was augmented with animation and of course music. The video below captures examples of his painting of flowers and plants.

One blog post is inadequate to share our delightful adventure today. We’ll have more reporting coming, got tons of pictures and video clips to go through. Indianapolis is fortunate to have both the space and support facilities for a show such as this.

A massive interactive Van Gogh display

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Tomorrow we are off to the Indianapolis Museum of Art Newfields for the Indy version of the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit. Now showing in The Lume Indianapolis as described in this part of the Van Gogh display website:  “Nearly 150 state-of-the-art digital projectors transform two-dimensional paintings into a three-dimensional world that guests can explore while walking through 30,000 square feet of immersive galleries. THE LUME Indianapolis has 60 minutes of digital content that runs continuously and simultaneously in all the digital galleries.”

We are excited about seeing this huge display. Our tickets also get us into the rest of the museum, which is 5 stories of displays.  We’ll have a full report after our trip tomorrow. Stay tuned…

A couple of squirrels

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It is a very cold day, highs only in the mid teens. These two squirrels were “frozen” in place for several minutes on the trunk of this maple tree. There were no predators visible from our back door, however these guys seemed to be in the classic “Don’t move or that thing will catch and eat us!”

A nifty wine accessory kit

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This past Christmas our Seattle family gave us a very thoughtful gift. The wine accessory kit is most useful, and we certainly have appreciated it. Here is a video that shows how the battery operated cork remover device works.

This cork remover is easy to use, and makes opening that new bottle of wine an enjoyable chore.

A turn of the century sanitarium for addiction treatments

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This stately brick home was built in the 1860’s in what was then the outskirts of Shelbyville, Indiana. In 1906 the son of a local judge opened this home as a hospital for the treatment of those with addictions.

The Hord Sanitarium building as it is today

View in 1906 Postcard from The Indiana Album

Back of postcard from The Indiana Album

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Luther Hord operated The Hord Sanitarium Park from 1906 until well into the 1940’s. The Hord Sanitarium was known throughout the Midwest as one of the premier hospitals for the treatment of alcohol and drug abuse. Currently it appears that the multistory house is being used as apartments.

Burning tree now behind traffic cones and tape

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                        Remember the burning tree we posted about nearly a week ago?                                           Here is the link to that post.

No smoke was visible when the photo was taken

Apparently the Fire Department or the Street Department or somebody decided that this smoldering tree should at least be roped off to keep the public away and safe. They first wanted to just let it burn and “it would eventually fall into the river”.