Groundbreaking for the Art & Nature Park’s Visitor Center will take place in September Marlon Blackwell is the architect.
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Art, nature and change at the IMA
This brush with something wild is a fitting introduction to the larger aims and impact the Art & Nature Park is already having on the IMA. Although there’s still a year to go before this new dimension fully comes into its own as part of the museum’s regular menu, it is causing members at every level of the museum’s organizational chart to think afresh about what they do, how they do it — and why.
“Aesthetically,” Freiman says, looking out over a stretch of grassy meadowland bordered by a protective expanse of trees, “the notion of change and constant transformation is at the heart of the visual promise of this project.”
Nature is resilient
From where we stand, it is easy to forget that less than 50 years ago this place was a quarry, an industrial site where debris from the building of I-465 was dumped. But nature is nothing if not resilient. Over the course of a couple of human generations, the site has been reclaimed by green and growing things. By the time the IMA acquired the land, including what had become a small lake at its center, in the late 1990s, the tract amounted to an open secret — a truly wild place in the middle of a big city. Animals of the four-legged and two-legged varieties turned it into an unofficial refuge.
“This site already has a life of its own,” Freiman acknowledges. “It will be a more public space than it is now. Adding art will help people understand there is a special quality to this place, and it needs to be treated well.”
The museum’s acquisition of the land coincided with and accelerated a growing awareness on the part of the IMA regarding its role as environmental steward. Long known for the beauty and care given to its extensive grounds and gardens, the Art & Nature Park introduced a wilderness element to the museum’s portfolio, an opportunity for the institution to actively reflect on the abiding relationship between art and nature. “There’s an interesting tug of war in the space between human beings and nature,” Freiman observes. ”We’re trying to explore that as much as possible.”
This exploration will be reflected by the works of art the IMA commissions for the park. Eight works by a diverse array of contemporary artists and art collaboratives from around the world will be installed over the next year. Unlike a traditional sculpture park, where the emphasis is often on the monumental and the permanent, the IMA has chosen instead to apply a light and fleeting touch.
“We went for a model of temporary art because we wanted it to constantly change — just like the environment,” Freiman says. “But we wanted it to not just change, but for there to be an integration of art and nature, a way to reflect how the two things come to bear on one another.”
Make something connected
The work of the artists selected was researched by Freiman; her associate in contemporary art, Rebecca Urchill; and the IMA’s president, Maxwell Anderson.
Freiman says they were especially interested in working with younger artists, that they wanted an international mix and that they sought work in as wide a variety of media as possible. The effect has been to create a platform for artists to make new work that is not tied to the marketplace. “If you give artists a chunk of money and 100 acres and you say, ‘Come out, explore this place, find something that’s interesting to you and make something connected to this place’ — it’s amazing what everyone’s coming up with.”
The Art & Nature Park, she adds, is “a complement to the museum, which is a more formal setting out of necessity because part of our mission for the permanent collection is to maintain it and make sure it lives on for a long time. We don’t have to do that here because our mission is temporary and change. That allows us to keep things fresh.”
No work of art commissioned for the park will be expected to last, although the lives of some works are bound to extend for a longer time than others. And Freiman allows that if a certain work becomes beloved by the public during its tenure, the museum will reserve the option to extend its life. “I think all of us hope that this is a place where people can be free and have intimate, meditative experiences while little kids can run around if they want, and where people can climb on the art and touch it if they need to.”
Team-building art
The Art & Nature Park is also having a significant impact on the museum’s internal dynamics. In part, this has been thanks to the work of Type A, the collaborative team of conceptual artists Adam Ames and Andrew Bordwin. Type A’s work deals with relationships, competition and boundaries. “Over the last six years, the institution has been going through huge change in terms of its vision and its focus and its way of engaging the community,” Freiman says of the IMA. “I was thinking of that in relation to my own curatorial practice and [Type A] were thinking about it in terms of their artistic practice. This all came together in a fascinating way at the same time.”
Type A proposed an extended team-building exercise with the Art & Nature Park staff. The artists became certified team leaders and began making regular visits to the IMA to work with the staff. The result, Freiman says, has enabled the museum to re-imagine and expand its understanding of community. “It’s interesting as a curator because curating is about control to some degree, and so is artmaking. In a way, all curators and all artists are control freaks if you really care about what you’re doing,” Freiman says. “But what this project is about is teamwork. It’s about building a community. And it’s about allowing the process of team-building to lead to the eventual outcome out here.” That process, Freiman says, has prompted an interesting set of questions: “How is this team-building art? And how is art team-building?”
Among other things, the process has inspired intense and on-going conversations among staff members about the park and the museum. It will also prompt the creation of a Web site this September where the public will be able to observe the Art & Nature Park process as it unfolds over the next year. “Usually the development of projects is done behind closed doors,” Freiman says. “This is a community-based project that is about cultural change. It’s a radical concept. There is no museum in the world that has ever done a project like this … It changes the whole dynamic of the institution.” Post a comment
