I was really here, though, not to sample Indianapolis's lodging, good though it was, but to visit Newfields, the Art Museum - above all to see this huge snail (by the Italian collective Cracking Art).
The museum had a good, if fairly small collection of C19th US art, too - as ever, the surprises are very often local art works, like this view of the city at dusk (look at all those different kinds of lighting!) by Theodor Groll (another figure in my never-to-be written book on Germans and C19th US art - I mean, I'd need decent German to write it, but there's an interesting and lively book there) - which was full of wonderful details.
And then this very Japanese-influenced (look carefully at the woman crossing the canal) view by Richard Buckner Gruelle.
This is quite some picture frame!! (Abbott Handerson Thayer, Margaret McKittrick, ca. 1903).
And then the saddest memorial portrait, Joseph R. Mason's depiction of Maria Jane Andrew (1841) - with her dead brother's picture on the wall behind - this was painted days after she died, aged 7 - possibly as a result of too much serious reading, judging by that pile of books.
An excellent Kara Walker projection/image, They Wax Nice White Folks While They Lasted (Sez One Gal to Another) (2001).
And then wonderful grounds - this is a wonderful bonus of autumn conferences away from Califonia: leaves.
And a stunning sunset on the shuttle ride down to Bloomington,
and pretty good lighting effects on the campus, too!
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