AFA Autumn 2018

Autumn 88 www.afamag.com |  www.incollect.com Indianapolis Museum of Art’s Design Gallery Gets a Facelift by Shelley Selim Fig. 1: The long entryway to the Design Gallery has been converted into a timeline with blow-up images of period interiors and featuring objects representing design movements from 1900 to today. Rendering by Lara Huchteman © Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. One of Newfields’ greatest strengths is its commitment to listening to its guests. A report outlining six months of surveys, observations, and interviews with visitors to the contemporary design gallery revealed that they often felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of objects—shocking news to an impassioned design junkie such as myself. But often the responses made a lot of sense. People struggled to understand the gallery’s organization into the aesthetic movements of Postmodernism, Expressionism, and Modernism. They wanted more interpretive materials and everyone, from families to design professionals, expressed an interest in having more hands-on experiences to enhance their appreciation of the design process. When the IMA received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services in 2014, it provided us with financial support to create more interpretive and interactive he Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields has the largest permanent collection gallery devoted to modern and contemporary design of any art museum in the United States. My predecessor, R. Craig Miller, largely cultivated this collection of furniture, domestic products, and industrial design objects in the five years he spent at the museum before retiring in 2013. I had admired the contemporary design gallery since first visiting the IMA and, after joining the museum in 2016, I met with the interpretation, media, evaluation, and design departments to discuss its strengths, weaknesses, and potential. The reinstalled Design Gallery (Fig. 1), which debuted on July 27, offers refreshed, interactive, and at times, immersive perspectives.