November 16 — Imagining a Global City: Visions of Indianapolis and the World
How can we learn from the best wisdom the world’s cultures have to offer? Three works of African art from the IMA collection will frame this conversation. For example, the Songye people in Congo bring out a statue in times of crisis to inspire the community’s collective imagination. What equivalent “community power figures” might spark imaginative discussions about local challenges? Begin with an optional tour that highlights these art works.
When: Sunday, November 16, 2 – 4 pm
Where: Deer-Zink Pavilion Indianapolis Museum of Art 4000 N. Michigan Rd., Indianapolis, IN 46208
Presenters for this Spirit & Place event include IMA Curator Ted Celenko, IU-Kenya Partnership Director Fran Quigley, and other medical professionals and refugee workers. Presented by Indianapolis Museum of Art, Ambassadors for Children, Indianapolis-Eldoret Sister City Committee, International Interfaith Initiative, and IUPUI IU School of Medicine IU-Kenya Partnership.
FREE
Three African works from the Indianapolis Museum of Art will frame a wide-ranging conversation about the links binding Indiana and the world. More than simply demonstrating that the IMA is one of Central Indiana’s most important international institutions, this discussion will explore broader issues: How are Hoosiers engaged around the world in search for solutions to global problems? How are Indiana neighborhoods adapting to growing numbers of newcomers from around the planet, each group bringing new traditions, new challenges and new resources? And how can all of us in Indiana learn to adopt the best that the world’s cultures have to offer?
Before the discussion in the IMA’s Deer Zink Pavilion, optional informal tours of the Eiteljorg Gallery of African Art will highlight the works that will frame the discussion. Images of these pieces will be projected during the conversation in the Pavilion. IMA’s African art curator Ted Celenko will explain the three works’ meaning and significance. Then several local educators, doctors, workers with refugees, and others will stimulate a discussion that explores how the global and local issues brought into relief by the pieces shape all of our lives.
An example: One piece will be “Healing of the Abiku Children,” by the Nigerian artist Twins Seven Seven. This painting displays beliefs of the Yoruba people about the relations of birth and family, death and community healing. Fran Quigley of the IU Medical School’s partnership with Moi University in Kenya will discuss how Western medicine is being adapted to African cultures in Kenya and elsewhere. Shola Ajaboye of the African Center will discuss the challenges facing African immigrants to Indianapolis when they deal with our health care system. The entire audience will be invited to imagine how our understandings of the connectedness of life and healing can be made richer by the newcomers coming to Indianapolis, and by the experiences of Hoosiers working around the world.
A second piece shaping the discussion will be El Anatsui’s “Duvor,” a magnificent “community cloth” made from scrap aluminum cans and copper wire. The discussion stimulated by “Duvor” will go beyond Africa, and include issues of ecological sustainability and global waste, and the environmental connections between Indiana and the world.
A third work will be a 19th century community power figure of the Songye people in Congo. This statue was brought out at times of crisis for villages, to inspire ideas and provoke the collective imagination about how to address the urgent problems facing the community. The audience will be encouraged to imagine the sorts of equivalent “community power figures” that might spark our own imaginative discussions about how to address some of the crises facing Indianapolis and the world today.
Following the discussion in Deer Zink Pavilion, participants will be allowed to tour the IMA’s galleries on their own, viewing the pieces with newly “globalized” eyes, imagining how the works of art might illuminate our changing place in a shrinking world.
