Yellow Bench

Bench Around the Lake by Jeppe Hein
One of 15 undulating yellow-painted steel benches placed around
the park's lake. This one is located on the east side of the Lake,
with a view of  Indianapolis Igloo, by Andrea Zittel

A few years ago, I was visiting one of the contemporary galleries 

at the Indianapolis Museum of Art when I turned a corner

and started laughing. What had caught my eye was one of those

creations about which one might hear, "That ain't art.

Shit, my kid could do better than that." 

Yeh, well, say what you want but the damn thing worked.

It was (and remains) a length of red cord, anchored with a thumb tack

at a point on the floor of the gallery and stretched to a

point on the window at just about the horizon line of where the 

trees in the distance meet the sky. That damn red line

defines the space in which it exists and carries your eye outside,

to the trees beyond. It's a thing of dumbfounding beauty.

The other thing that amazed me was that the IMA had

somehow managed to maintain a view outside

the west side windows of the building,

one without the visual corruption of cheap-ass

housing developments, apartments and strip malls;

I knew what was on the other side of the trees and it 

was nothing like the idyll that the red cord

pointed towards.   

A couple enjoys a spring afternoon picnic lunch
on The Meadow near the lake. 

As it turned out, what I had seen was a 100-acre parcel of land 

consisting of woods, wetlands, a meadow and a 35-acre lake 

which was developed and opened in 2010 as 

100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park.

It is one of the largest museum art parks in the country and, so far,

the grounds contains ten site-specific works designed by

artists from around the world.

View of a portion of Stratum Pier by Kendall Buster,
2010. Steel and fiberglass viewing platform
overlooking the lake. The stacked layers
suggest a topographical map.

The Museum grounds consists of three distinct areas, 

all of them beautiful and lovingly tended by landscape designers 

and gardeners: the Museum grounds; Oldfields, the country mansion 

and estate that belonged to Josiah K. Lilly, Jr.;  and the 100 Acre Park. 

During the day, I explored some part of all three areas, 

concentrating my time in the Park. Of course,

I took an awful lot of pictures, so you can expect related

posts over the coming days. Unfortunately, however, 

it was not permitted to take pictures of the

red string that pointed me towards

my "hunnert acre wood" a few years back.

Humph.