INDIANAPOLIS, IN.- The Indianapolis Museum of Art announced today that four pieces of outdoor sculpture in its collection will be provided on long-term loan to Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. The four works will be on view throughout the school’s campus in downtown Indianapolis. Three of the four sculptures on loan from the IMA were relocated to the IUPUI campus in late January. The final piece of sculpture will be relocated in March 2009.

The Indianapolis Museum of Art has enjoyed a long relationship with Herron School of Art & Design, now a part of IUPUI, and shares its lineage with the school. Both entities were established through the generosity of local businessman John Herron, who in 1895 bequeathed most of his estate to the Art Association of Indianapolis, requesting that the funds be used to create an art gallery (John Herron Art Museum, now the Indianapolis Museum of Art) and an art school (John Herron Art School, now Herron School of Art & Design). Presently, the IMA hosts some Herron classes and regularly recruits Herron students for its internship program. The IMA also will team with Herron for a special student strand of its two-day international design symposium Shaping A New Century on March 6 and 7, 2009.

“Because Herron and the IMA have common roots, this collaboration is especially significant for the Museum,” said Maxwell L. Anderson, The Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO of the IMA. “Positioned on the grounds of IUPUI, these sculptures will provide university students, future trail users and downtown visitors with immediate access to works from the IMA collection.”

The sculptures from the IMA collection will join newly commissioned works of public art to be located along the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, an urban bike and pedestrian path currently in development in downtown Indianapolis. The trail will connect neighborhoods, entertainment amenities and Indianapolis’s five downtown cultural districts. The western corridor of the trail, to be completed in 2011, will pass through the campus of IUPUI along Blackford Street. The trail will run adjacent to two of the four sculptures from the IMA collection. The Indianapolis Cultural Trail also will serve as the downtown hub for central Indiana’s greenway system, which connects bikers and pedestrians to the IMA campus from downtown via the White River Wapahani Trail and Central Canal Towpath.

“The IMA sculptures on loan to campus reflect IUPUI’s dedication to integrating the arts into the Indianapolis community and the lives of our students,” said IUPUI Chancellor Charles R. Bantz. “IUPUI welcomes opportunities to extend the long-existing collaboration between our Herron School of Art and Design, Indiana’s professional art and design school, and Indiana’s premiere art museum.”

Sculptures on loan to IUPUI from the IMA include:

Spaces with Iron, 1972
Will Horwitt (American, 1934 -1985)
cast iron and bronze
54 x 84 x 68 3/4 in
81.220

Will Horwitt used bronze, steel and wood to create indoor and outdoor minimalist sculpture. Often in large scale, his balanced compositions explore the interaction between individual shapes and forms. The title of this work, Spaces with Iron, draws attention to the negative space created by the sculpture’s openings as well as the environment in which it resides. Born in New York City, Horwitt was raised in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and went on to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1952 to 1954. He received the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Sculpture in 1965 and the Louis C. Tiffany Purchase Grant in 1968. His works are included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut; the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut; and the Guggenheim Museum, New York. Horwitt’s work was included in the 1973 Whitney Biennial and the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s Painting and Sculpture Today in 1976. The Indianapolis Museum of Art acquired his sculpture through the Helen Benjamin Fund in 1981.

East Gate/West Gate, 1973
Sasson Soffer (American, b. 1925)
stainless steel
24 x 40 x 30 ft.
82.56

Sasson Soffer has worked throughout his career as both a painter and a sculptor. Informed by the work of Mark Rothko and other Abstract Expressionist artists with whom he studied in New York in the early 1950s, Soffer’s encaustic on panel paintings and steel sculptures display his interest in sweeping, gestural forms and monumental scale. Soffer’s 1973 outdoor sculpture East Gate/West Gate is constructed of welded stainless steel tubes, arranged in a dynamic curvilinear composition. Soffer was born in Baghdad, Iraq, and later moved to New York where he attended Brooklyn College. Soffer’s paintings were included in two Whitney Biennials, and his work is a part of the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York. The Indianapolis Museum of Art acquired this work as a gift from the Alliance of the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1980.

Mega-Gem, 1989
John Francis Torreano (American, b. 1941)
heliarch welded aluminum plate, 36 cast aluminum anodized rosettes,
7'2" x 11' x 7'2"
1997.6

Most of Torreano’s career has been a focused investigation of the properties of real and fake gemstones in a series of paintings and sculpture. Torreano is interested in how gems are solid, yet look insubstantial and can change in appearance depending on lighting, placement and materials. Torreano began incorporating gems into his paintings in the early 1970s, then started creating geometric sculpture further exploring his interest in the dynamism of gems. Mega-Gem is a large-scale sculpture that is inspired by gems, yet is composed entirely of aluminum. John Torreano received his BFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 1963, and in 1967 received an MFA from Ohio State University. Torreano’s works have been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and a painting of Torreano’s was featured in the 1969 Whitney Biennial. Currently, Torreano is a professor of art and art education at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. The Indianapolis Museum of Art acquired his sculpture as a gift from Robert Shiffler, the Contemporary Art Society Fund and Henry F. and Katherine D. DeBoest Memorial Fund in 1997.

Portrait of History, 1997
Shan Zou Zhou (Chinese, b. 1952)
Bronze
100 x 24 x 30 in.
2001.388

Inspired by both Eastern and Western philosophy, literature, myths and history, the work of Shan Zou Zhou transcends cultural boundaries in an attempt to represent a collective unconscious. Shan Zou Zhou creates sculpture and large-scale paintings reminiscent of prehistoric art. For Portrait of History Zhou used bronze, a prehistoric material, to create a primitive figure that recalls myths and legends across cultures. Shan Zou received a BFA in drama and painting at the University of Shanghai in 1982 and received an MFA from the National Academy for Arts and Crafts in Beijing in 1984. Today Shan Zou Zhou collaborates with his brother, DaHuang Zhou, to form The Zhou Brothers—an artistic team that creates paintings, sculptures and prints. In 1986, after receiving national acclaim in China, Shan Zou and his brother moved to Chicago, where they currently work and reside. The Zhou Brothers have exhibited in both group and solo exhibitions internationally, and are a part of the permanent collections of institutions across China, Europe, and the United States. The Indianapolis Museum of Art acquired Portrait of History as a gift from Dr. and Mrs. Eugene Van Hove in memory of their son, Jeffrey Van Hove, in 2001.