Indianapolis Museum of Art

The Indianapolis Museum of Art (known colloquially as the IMA) is an encyclopedic art museum located in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The museum, which underwent a $74 million expansion in 2005, is located on a 152-acre (0.62 km²) campus on the near northwest area outside downtown Indianapolis, northwest of Crown Hill Cemetery.

The Indianapolis Museum of Art is the ninth oldest and eighth largest encyclopedic art museum in the United States. The permanent collection comprises over 54,000 works, including African, American, Asian, and European pieces. Significant areas of the collection include: Neo-Impressionist paintings; Japanese paintings of the Edo period; Chinese ceramics and bronzes; paintings, sculptures, and prints by Paul Gauguin and the Pont-Aven School; a large number of works by J. M. W. Turner; and a growing contemporary art collection. Other areas of emphasis include textiles and fashion arts as well as a recent focus on modern design.

In addition to its collections, the museum consists of 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park; Oldfields, a restored American Country Place era estate once owned by Josiah K. Lilly, Jr.; and restored gardens and grounds originally designed by Percival Gallagher of the Olmsted Brothers firm. The IMA also owns the Miller House, a Mid-Century modern home designed by Eero Saarinen and located in Columbus, Indiana. The museum's holdings demonstrate the institution's emphasis on the connections among art, design, and the natural environment.

Brigham Young University Museum of Art

The Brigham Young University Museum of Art, located in Provo, Utah, United States is the university's primary art museum and is one of the best attended university-campus art museums in the United States. The museum, which had been discussed for more than fifty years, opened in a 10,000-square-foot (930 m²) space in October 1993 with a large exhibit on the Etruscans. The museum is an integral part of the BYU College of Fine Arts and Communications and provides opportunities for students across the college and the university's campus.

History

After breaking ground two years prior, the museum opened in October 1993 as a location to house BYU's extensive collection of more than 17,000 pieces of art which, due to a lack of space, had never been able to be displayed permanently. The lack of a permanent home had resulted in damage to some of the collection and the loss of more than 900 pieces of art.

According to a 2004 survey, the museum ranked first in attendance among university campus art museums with 334,774 visitors. Among all art museums, the museum comes in 31st in attendance out of 157 member art museums from the United States, Canada and Mexico. The museum's philosophy of reaching out to the students and the community has been cited as one of the reasons for its success to date. In addition to having the largest university museum attendance, the museum also has the highest level of student attendance because its staff works closely with faculty to incorporate the museum into school curriculum.

Indianapolis

Indianapolis (/ˌɪndiəˈnæpəlɪs/) is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana and the county seat of Marion County. With an estimated population of 848,788 in 2014, Indianapolis is the largest city in Indiana, second largest in the American Midwest, and 14th largest in the U.S.Indianapolis–Carmel–Anderson is the 33rd largest metropolitan area in the U.S., with nearly 2 million inhabitants. Residents of the city are occasionally referred to as "Indianapolitans," although this archaic term is rarely used.

Indianapolis was founded in 1821 near the confluence of the White River and Fall Creek as a planned city for the new seat of Indiana's state government. The city's economy is diverse, including health care, life sciences, manufacturing, motorsports, and transportation and logistics, contributing to a gross domestic product (GDP) of $125.8 billion in 2014. Three Fortune 500 companies are based in the city: Anthem Inc., Eli Lilly and Company, and Calumet Specialty Products Partners. Nicknamed the Crossroads of America, Indianapolis is the junction for four Interstate highways and six U.S. highways. Indianapolis International Airport is a major international cargo hub, ranking as the 23rd busiest airport in the world by cargo traffic in 2014. Indianapolis is considered a "high sufficiency" global city.

Art

Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts – artworks, expressing the author's imaginative or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power. In their most general form these activities include the production of works of art, the criticism of art, the study of the history of art, and the aesthetic dissemination of art.

The oldest form of art are visual arts, which include creation of images or objects in fields including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and other visual media. Architecture is often included as one of the visual arts; however, like the decorative arts, it involves the creation of objects where the practical considerations of use are essential—in a way that they usually are not in a painting, for example. Music, theatre, film, dance, and other performing arts, as well as literature and other media such as interactive media, are included in a broader definition of art or the arts. Until the 17th century, art referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts or sciences. In modern usage after the 17th century, where aesthetic considerations are paramount, the fine arts are separated and distinguished from acquired skills in general, such as the decorative or applied arts.

Museum

A museum (/mjuˈziːəm/; myoo-zee-um) is an institution that cares for (conserves) a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities throughout the world and more local ones exist in smaller cities, towns and even the countryside. Museums have varying aims, ranging from serving researchers and specialists to serving the general public. The goal of serving researchers is increasingly shifting to serving the general public.

Some of the most attended museums include the Louvre in Paris, the National Museum of China in Beijing, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the British Museum in London, the National Gallery in London and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. There are many types of museums, including art museums, natural history museums, science museums, war museums and children's museums.