Visiting the IMA after School

Yesterday's trip to the Indianapolis Museum of Arts (IMA) began with bad news: Simon and Johanna were ill, which meant they would miss a trip to a very famous sight in Indianapolis. The IMA was founded in 1883 and it is among the ten largest and ten oldest general art museums in the US. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and some exhibits were interesting.

After school we hit the road! Arriving there, we noticed that the weather was pretty nice (you usually have no idea what the weather is like because of the windowless classrooms at Ben Davis), which is seldom these days, and we went to the park around the museum first. It was a very, very nice park with some artworks in it like the famous pop art "LOVE" letters by the American artist Robert Indiana (see photo 1). The artwork was created more than 40 years ago as the first sculptural form of the artist`s famous LOVE painting that was used for a MoMA Christmas card in 1965. The artist got the idea for the postcard paintin while attending a Church service as a child in Indianapolis. He was impressed by a small plaque that he found over the reader`s platform bearing the inscription “God is Love”.

Also it was a lot of fun to see a tree-climb-race between Mr. Ziliak and Mrs. Hennemann (see photo 2).

Surprisingly the park was better than the museum itself, in my and some of the others` opinions.After taking some photos and walking around the park for a while, we finally went into the museum and had some time to look around on our own. It was a little bit confusing what they presented in there: The museum shows “African, American, Asian, European and contemporary art, textiles and fashion art, as well as a growing collection of design arts” (https://www.imamuseum.org/visit/museum.) So it had no real theme/topic, but some of the artworks were pretty abstract, but some were pretty nice, too. My personal favourite was the never-ending boat, which was a miniature-boat, built as a circle. Mrs Hennemann`s favourite was a room with 37 loudspeakers hanging from the ceiling. The artist recorded what 37 people would whisper into somebody`s ear, so the room was full of whispering and you had the impression that you go mad…

In the evening some went to marching band practice.  It was awfully cold, but the members of the band practiced with a lot of discipline, and it was incredible to see about 250 students on the football pitch with their instruments and flags. There is another competition on Saturday, and Julia is going to tell you more about it later. She seems to be the biggest fan of the Ben Davis marching band ever.

All in all, I think the IMA was worth a visit, but in my opinion the park was way better and more interesting than the museum.

Leon Heins