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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum has always had an allure simply because it documents the history of the iconic and internationally known Indy 500.
But the exhibits often haven’t kept up with the times, a fact museum leadership has smartly acknowledged in recent years and is poised to dramatically change.
The museum’s launch this week of the public phase of an $89 million fundraising campaign promises to fully transform the 100,000-square-foot building and 40,000-square-foot exhibition space that hasn’t been renovated or upgraded since 1976.
It’s a welcome development that should help reinvigorate the museum, generate more excitement for it among Hoosiers, give its many out-of-state visitors a more tantalizing experience, and make the institution a bigger part of the city’s arts and culture scene.
Joe Hale, the museum’s executive director, told IBJ’s Mickey Shuey that the renovated space will offer the kind of interactive, immersive and entertaining experiences museum-goers have come to expect in the 21st century.
That will include a racing simulator and hands-on experiences, including a pit stop competition area that will let visitors make use of tools used during the race. About $64 million of the campaign will go toward that transformation as well as technology and infrastructure improvements.
About $20 million will be spent on creating an education curriculum and programming as well as a learning center for science, technology, engineering, art and math.
Lilly Endowment Inc. provided the money for education initiatives through an earlier quiet phase of the fundraising campaign. The museum also has received $10 million from Mary and Randy Rogers and $5 million from the Dyson Family Foundation, founded by museum board Chair Robert Dyson.
Penske Entertainment, which owns the speedway and the museum building, also is expected to donate to the campaign. The museum is operated independently by a separate board, but its new exhibit space will include a gallery dedicated to Roger Penske and his racing team’s 19 Indy 500 victories.
Now, it’s time for the broader public to also donate to the museum’s transformational campaign and help preserve what Indianapolis is best known for around the world.
The renovations will come with some inconvenience. The museum will close for about 18 months starting in November. But when it reopens just ahead of the 109th running of the Indianapolis 500, it will offer so much more grandeur to the wonderful and historic exhibit pieces that generations of race fans have come to love.
A new automobile- and equipment-restoration facility will be built, allowing visitors to tour and see automobile restoration work being done in real time.
An elevated mezzanine will allow visitors to look down upon the museum’s impressive collection of winning cars, including the 1911 Marmon Wasp that won the first Indy 500.
The famed Borg-Warner trophy also will be there, waiting for the face of the new winner to be etched into its sterling silver.•
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Correction: This editorial has been corrected to reflect that the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum building is about 100,000 square feet. About 40,000 square feet of that is exhibit space. See more corrections here.
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