Indianapolis Museum of Art displays Judith G. Levy's [i]Memory Cloud[/i]

Written by Laura Pinegar Sunday, 02 August 2009 22:14

INDIANAPOLIS , IN - The Indianapolis Museum of Art debuts a work by artist Judith G. Levy, commissioned for the Museum’s ongoing series of site-specific installations in its principal entry pavilion. Levy’s piece, titled Memory Cloud, will be the artist’s first major solo museum exhibition. Memory Cloud will appear as a monumental "cloud" at the center of the IMA’s Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion. The work will comprise approximately 800 translucent plastic photo viewers that hang on strands of microfilament. Visitors will be able to hold individual viewers up to the light to see an image inside. Each of the viewers will contain a unique photograph, drawn from a collection of thousands of found 35mm slide transparencies that the artist has collected throughout the Midwest. These photographs capture people posing for family snapshots, attending holiday events, working, enjoying vacations or simply observing the world around them. On view through 24 January, 2010.

“My goal is that this installation will give visitors an opportunity to create individual and collective experiences, as they are prompted by specific images they see to retrieve some of their own memories and share them with others,” Levy said. “Many of the plastic viewers will be within reach, but others will be inaccessible in order to acknowledge the elusive nature of memory. As I looked through many thousands of slides in my collection from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, I was deeply moved by our very human need to signify an experience with a photograph and by the poignancy in our efforts to try to preserve the moment.”

Judith G. Levy is an artist based in Lawrence, Kansas, who until recently lived and worked in Indianapolis and whose work has been shown at numerous venues throughout the city.

“Levy is an ambitious artist whose work is in dialogue with international trends and may already be familiar to many IMA visitors,” said Lisa Freiman, senior curator of contemporary art at the IMA. “We are pleased to showcase Levy’s project Memory Cloud, which emphasizes visitor interaction and experience, in this installation in the IMA’s entrance pavilion.”

Levy’s piece is part of the Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion installation series launched in February 2007 and made possible by a $2.5 million grant from the Indianapolis-based Efroymson Fund. The works are installed on a rotating basis with a new commission from a different artist approximately every six months. Levy’s work follows an installation by New York–based artist Orly Genger, titled Whole, which was on display in the IMA’s Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion from November 21, 2008 through June 14, 2009.

About Judith G. Levy

Born in Far Rockaway, New York, Levy has spent a significant portion of her career in the Midwest, including five years in Indianapolis. Levy has created numerous public art projects and has been featured in solo exhibitions at galleries in Indianapolis, Minneapolis and Chicago, as well as many group exhibitions in the U.S. and Canada. Levy’s art deals with themes of private and public history and the role that both fact and fiction play in shaping memories. Her work incorporates a variety of mediums, including drawing, installation, video and performance.

In 2008, Levy was awarded a Lilly Endowment Creative Renewal Fellowship by the Arts Council of Indianapolis. In 2007, she was awarded a public art commission to create a sculpture titled Wonder for the White River State Park in Indianapolis. As part of the artist collaborative Silevy, her project Everybody Loves a Parade was also included in the IMA’s recent exhibition On Procession. Levy received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Drawing and Painting from Hunter College in New York, and a master’s degree from Adelphi University.

About the Indianapolis Museum of Art

The Indianapolis Museum of Art offers visitors an inclusive view of creativity through its collection of more than 54,000 works of art that span 5,000 years of history from across the world’s continents. Encompassing 152 acres of gardens and grounds, the IMA is among the 10 largest encyclopedic art museums in the United States, and it features significant collections of African, American, Asian, European and contemporary art, as well as a newly established collection of design arts. The collections include paintings, sculpture, furniture and design objects, prints, drawings and photographs, as well as textiles and costumes.

The IMA completed a $74 million expansion project in May 2005. The construction added 164,000 square feet to the Museum and includes renovation of 90,000 square feet of existing space. In order to present major exhibitions of its own and to accommodate major traveling exhibitions, the expanded Museum was outfitted with new 10,000-plus-square-foot Clowes Special Exhibition Gallery on the Museum’s first level. In November 2008, the IMA opened the renovated 600-seat Tobias Theater. Nicknamed, “The Toby,” the theater is a venue for talks, performances and films.

Located at 4000 Michigan Road, the IMA and Lilly House are open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday and Friday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. The IMA is closed Mondays and Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s days. For more information, call 317-923-1331 or visit www.imamuseum.org.