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The work of surrealist artist Salvador Dali will be showcased at Newfields’ Lume in 2024, leadership of the art museum and gardens announced Monday.
Before Dali’s signature melting clocks are projected in Lume’s digital galleries, an encore Van Gogh presentation is scheduled for the second half of 2023.
The upcoming attractions at the 30,000-square-foot Lume were unveiled during the museum’s annual meeting.
“The Lume continues to bring several first-time visitors to the Indianapolis Museum of Art,” said Newfields CEO Colette Pierce Burnette. “In early July, we will have the return of Vincent Van Gogh. This one-of-a-kind experience is back by popular demand.”
Projections of Van Gogh paintings served as the debut exhibition at the fourth-floor Lume from July 2021 to May 2022, attracting a record-setting 235,000 attendees at the 140-year-old museum.
“Monet & Friends Alive,” the second Lume attraction, opened in July 2022 and will close on May 29.
Jonathan Berger, vice president of marketing and external affairs at Newfields, said about 120,000 attendees, or 51% of the cumulative Van Gogh audience, have attended “Monet & Friends Alive” across 11 months.
Despite the dip in attendance, Berger noted that “Monet & Friends Alive” trailed only Winterlights—the museum’s outdoor show during the Christmas season—in popularity at Newfields’ 152-acre campus.
Burnette said Winterlights attracted nearly 150,000 visitors in 2022. The 2021 edition of Winterlights attracted 157,000 to set a record for outdoor attendance at Newfields.
After the encore Van Gogh run at the Lume wraps up at the conclusion of 2023, the Dali exhibition is expected to open in March.
Australian-based Grande Experiences presented “Dali Alive” for the first time last October in suburban Denver. Newfields will be the second museum to host the exhibition.
“Our partnership with Grande allows us a certain exclusivity in the Midwest,” Berger said. “That’s really exciting. From a business perspective, we’ll be drawing from Chicago and [other regional cities].”
Berger said the exhibition likely will be a chance for the museum to display a quartet of Dali works that have mostly been in storage since the IMA acquired the pieces in 1974.
During Monday’s meeting at the Toby Theater, Burnette also previewed “Work in Progress: Conversations about American Art,” a revamped installation of U.S. art that will open May 27 on the museum’s second floor.
Six Indianapolis residents known collectively as the Looking Glass Alliance surveyed the museum’s U.S. collection with a goal of including artists with various lived experiences in the new presentation. Nasreen Khan, Tatjana Rebelle, Kyng Rhodes, Jordan Ryan and Bobby Young make up the Looking Glass Alliance.
Meanwhile, three new installations at Newfields’ Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, otherwise known as 100 Acres, won’t arrive this summer as originally planned.
“We want to do it well, so we’re going to open in spring [2024],” Burnette said of the delay for “Home Again,” an exhibition featuring “Oracle of Intimation,” by Brooklyn-based artist Heather Hart; “This is NOT a Refuge,” by Indianapolis-based artist Anila Quayyum Agha; and “The Pollinator Pavilion,” by New York-based artists Mark Dion and Dana Sherwood.
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Is the IMA at Newfields still a
museum of fine art ?
Yes