Meandering Indiana 17 – Adams County

For a small county (pop. 34,000), Adams County has a lot of towns, or so it has always seemed to me.

Photo: Berne Chamber of Commerce

BERNE – First settled in 1852 by Swiss Mennonites, Berne was named after the capital of Switzerland. A popular place to visit in Berne is the Swiss Heritage Village & Museum. On the grounds of this outdoor museum are a number of nineteenth-century buildings (schoolhouse, church, sawmill), but the one I remember is the Sweitzer Barn. Cleverly designed with an upper story accessible from the rear by going up a bank or ramp, the “bank barn” was popular among Pennsylvania Germans as well as settlers in this area of northeast Indiana. I enjoyed my tour of this impressive structure during planning for the Indiana Humanities Council’s Barn Again! program.

Photo: Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites

GENEVA – Indiana author and naturalist Gene Stratton-Porter’s Limberlost Cabin is another highlight of Adams County. Now a state historic site, the home was built near the Limberlost Swamp, described as Stratton-Porter’s “playground, laboratory and inspiration.” Here she wrote novels, including Freckles and A Girl of the Limberlost, and nature books. While the home may be considered rustic by architects, I thought the interior was polished and beautiful with its updated Arts and Crafts style.

DECATUR – We should not leave Adams County without a brief nod to the town of Decatur, Indiana. Although I’ve missed it in my meandering, it is the county seat and site of the courthouse. No doubt the courthouse will be along the route of the Callithumpian Parade, scheduled for Oct. 26, 2009, although someone besides me will have to explain the origin of this annual Decatur event.

Photo: Derek Jensen

Fly Into (Not Over) Indiana

Written by Richard McCoy, an Associate Conservator of Objects & Variable Art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Honestly, I don’t work for the IMA’s public relations department, but I can’t think of anyway to tell you about the show that just opened here without sounding just like a “PR Guy.”  Simply put, Sacred Spain: Art and Belief in the Spanish World represents the best any museum has to offer, anywhere in the world. 

 

From the beauty and significance of the artworks on view, to the scholarship surrounding their context and selection, to the accompanying two-day symposium (which is free and starts this Friday: Sacred and Profane in the Early Modern Hispanic World, to the conservation work done on some of the artworks in the show (both here at the IMA and abroad), to the coordination and effort required to bring here over 70 artworks literally from all over the world, and, finally, to the design of the gallery and the hand-held devices you can use to learn more about the artworks as you experience them, all of this comes together for just three exceptional months right here in Indianapolis.

This exhibition is but more visual and tangible proof that Indianapolis is no longer a fly-over state for the art world; we’re quickly becoming a fly-into state.

As an art conservator at the IMA, one of my main responsibilities is to help make sure the artworks are safe and sound while they travel and are on view — this is a responsibility I share with a host of IMA folks.  My personal experiences with this show were in travelling to Madrid to oversee the packing and transportation of a few artworks from there to here (via a 15-hour truck ride to Paris), and earlier this year I oversaw the photography of The Crown of the Andes, which is in a private collection, and rarely on view.  Spending a few hours in close proximity to the Crown ranks up there as one of the most special days I’ve had working in the museum world.   

But what also makes this show exceptional is that you can see it all free — thanks to a generous donation by the Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation. Also, the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue are presented with the collaboration of the prestigious State Corporation for Spanish Cultural Action Abroad, SEACEX.

Finally, to give you some in-depth background about one of the paintings in the show, here’s a video with Max Anderson, the Director and CEO of the IMA, Ronda Kasl, the IMA curator, who for the past 5 or more years has been working to put this exhibition together, talking about one of the paintings in the show, which was conserved right here at the IMA by Christina Milton-O’Connell and Linda Witkowski.

McCoy conserves artworks across all areas of the collection and his research extends beyond the technology and structure of artworks to include artistic intent and execution as it relates to the preservation of contemporary art. His current research includes the investigation of interior channels in African Songye power figures and making conservation public through social media.

31 ways to experience the humanities

October is Arts & Humanities Month, which means 31 days of thinking, reading, talking and listening. Check out our guide to humanities experiences around Indiana for each day of the month.

Here are some of my favorites:

IDADA (Indianapolis Downtown Arts and Dealers Association) First Friday tour. There’s no better way to spend a Friday night in Indy than to wander from gallery to studio to performance space. Start at our place—the Meredith Nicholson Home (1500 N. Delaware St.)—for a discussion about how schools can serve as catalysts for urban renewal.

Wallow in your Hoosier-ness. Indiana authors, artists, musicians and poets will showcase their talents at An Evening in Brown County on Sunday, Oct. 11. I’m looking forward to Hoosier wine and beer, plus tapas made from locally grown food. Get more info here.

Travel back in time. Explore the religious and visual culture of 17^th-century Spain and Latin America–for free. Sacred Spain: Art and Belief in the Spanish World, opens Oct. 11 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. It features 80 works of art, including the legendary Crown of the Andes, an actual crown set with 450 emeralds.

Start a book club. If you’re like me and haven’t joined or started a club yet, it’s time. The Indiana Humanities Council will even lend you the books, for free. Check out our lending library.

Take a road trip. Take advantage of the great weather and scenery that October offers and head north, south, east and west, knowing that wherever you go, you’ll find a great museum or Hoosier landmark.

Find Peace in the Resource Connection

Today is the International Day of Peace, so we took a look at the various resources in the Resource Connection that centered on learning about peace. Here’s what we found:

• An excerpt from George Rogers Clark’s memoir that details peacemaking with the Indians.
• An overview of the Fall Creek Massacre, which took place in Madison County, Indiana.
• President Woodrow Wilson’s 14-points speech for world peace.
• Eight U.S. soldiers, some who killed and some who said no, reveal their inner moral dilemmas in Soldiers of Conscience.
• A Road Map to Peace in the Middle East—Can it be followed?
• A lesson plan to investigate whether media play a role in wars and conflicts.

Plus, much, much more. Check out the more than 40 resources that investigate peacemaking (and lack thereof) from various perspectives at the Resource Connection.

Find multi-generational activities in the Resource Connection

One of my favorite memories growing up was “Grandparents Day” at school. I loved eating lunch with my grandparents, performing skits and creating works of art just for them. As your family celebrates Grandparents Day, take a look at the Resource Connection and discover some activities your multi-generational family can do together—perhaps it’s reading a story that teaches young children what it means to be a veteran, reading a few stories handed down to students by their grandparents, or inviting kids to think about what grandpa really means when he says, “Back in my day…”.

Do your own search at the Resource Connection and see what you can discover.

A celebration of culture

By Dorothy Paunovich
“Serb Fest” is held at St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church in Merrillville, Ind., on the first weekend in August.

This year, an exhibit (funded in part by the Indiana Humanities Council) called “Immigrants, Serbs of Steel” told the story of hard-working immigrants who labored in the dangerous steel mills from the early 1900s to the present day. The Serbian immigrants helped build Northwest Indiana’s steel mills, industries, and towns. The exhibit can still be viewed every Sunday after church.

On Sun., Aug. 2, co-authors Stephen McShane and Gary Wilks (Steel Giants) shared  their research about the early immigrants’ contributions to northwest Indiana’s steel industries. Nick Tarailo (Bronko’s Restaurant) spoke of the stories his grandfather  shared about the early days in Gary. You can learn more by watching a video about the project, here.

Included in the exhibit was a burgundy embroidered vest that is more than 200 years old, and was buried in the ground during two wars (WWI and the Turkish war). It belonged to the great-grandmother of one of our parishioners who is 70-years-old. She said that they had to hide their identities and things of value during those times.

Every Serbian family has a fascinating story related to the events that brought them to this great country. Serb Fest is a celebration of those stories, and a homecoming for the heart. Everyone is welcome at Serb Fest–it is attended by so many non-Serbs because they love the food and music.

It has become somewhat of a homecoming for college students, relatives, and for those who are even just slightly Serbian. They can count on things that are familiar: their favorite foods and music. There’s nothing like watching several hundred young people in their teens and early 20s singing and dancing to music that came from a foreign land several generations ago. They still want to dance and sing because it really means something special to them. They all bring friends from school and their neighbors. I remember my non-Serb friends in high school being envious because we had spent the weekends at church dances, basketball tournaments, or traveled to perform with our folklore dance groups or choir. We had so much fun and had so much to talk about. If you went to a Serbian church, it didn’t mean you were in church all of the time, but AT church, where you were surrounded by all this great culture.

What are your “ethnic” memories growing up in Indiana? How do you celebrate that culture today?

Food for Thought: Indiana’s Food Culture

If you stopped by our booth at the Indiana State Fair during Hoosier Heritage Day and added your hometown’s food treasures to our map of Indiana–thanks! We’ve compiled some of the data into a map of Indiana’s food culture and identified things like food festivals and agribusinesses, as well as livestock and agricultural hot spots. Take a look, here.

Then, add your feedback below. We couldn’t fit everything on the map–and for that, we apologize. But, please continue to help us out by identifying what’s missing in your neck of the woods.

What-are-you-reading-Wednesday: Dreams from My Father

To read on vacation this summer, I chose Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, the autobiography Barack Obama wrote just after he finished law school. Published when Obama was 34 years old, the book seems like only “Part 1″ of a life story, yet it was already extraordinary at that point.

I have puzzled over the fact that Barack Obama both is, and isn’t, an African American, as we normally understand the term. As everyone knows by now, he was not born into a Black family, as Michelle Obama was on the south side of Chicago. Rather, he was born into, and raised by, a white family but fathered by a native of Kenya, a foreign student and a sojourner in America.

On the other hand, to the world at large, the youthful Obama was viewed as “African American” even though he didn’t know how to be a member of that ethnic/cultural group and had to learn, as teenagers do, from other teenagers. To top it off, he grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, places where being white or black are merely two among many options.

Is it any wonder that this unique individual has thought more deeply than most about issues of race and identity?

Although the book takes the reader on an odyssey through these early years, to southern California where Obama attended Occidental College, and eventually to Kenya where, after his father’s death, he met numerous members of his extended family, the chapters that caught my attention were those that related his experiences in Chicago as a “community organizer.”

I’m sure many of us wondered exactly what he did as a community organizer when we heard that expression so often during the 2008 presidential campaign. This book tells the whole tale. To boil it down, he set up and ran meetings. He tried to collaborate with local organizations, and sometimes he invited speakers and hoped that enough people would show up. He met with school principals and neighborhood leaders, discovering the hard truths about this tough urban environment.

Dreams from My Father is beautifully written, wide-ranging yet introspective, and storytelling at its most engrossing. The life that unfolds in its pages is all about learning, being born with questions about one’s identity, and starting down the long road to finding answers. In the most literal sense, it is about knowing that your existence can only be understood by seeing the world from a global perspective.

Does a justice’s sex, race or ethnicity contribute to the quality of the justice’s decisions?

Written by David Orentlicher, MD, JD. Orentlicher is the Samuel R. Rosen Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Hall Center for Law and Health at Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis and an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine.

Much has been made of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” comments.  Critics have claimed they reflected unfair bias and that her decisions as a Supreme Court Justice will be swayed by inappropriate personal prejudices.  Others have observed that the comments must be understood in their context and that doing so demonstrates that the judge was simply saying that one’s experiences affects how one understands the law.  In any event, Judge Sotomayor has stated that she chose her words poorly and miscommunicated her main point.

Is there some truth to Judge Sotomayor’s statement that she “would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life?”  Does a justice who has lived a life rich with experience make better decisions than a justice who has not done so?  Does a justice’s sex, race or ethnicity contribute to the quality of the justice’s decisions?

A few observations come to mind.  Judge Sotomayor may have confused the benefits of diversity in a group with judgments about individual members of a group.  Surely a justice’s views will be shaped by the justice’s experiences, and those in turn will be shaped by the justice’s sex, race or ethnicity.  When groups are making judgments, they do better when their members bring together a diversity of perspectives; a Supreme Court with justices of different sexes, races and ethnicities will probably make wiser judgments than a Supreme Court where all of the justices have the same sex, race and ethnicity.  But that is very different from saying that any one justice’s sex, race or ethnicity leads that justice to make wiser judgments than other justices.

Still, is there something to the claim that a life rich with experiences leads to better judgments on an individual basis?  Parents commonly think that they are providing a better upbringing for their children when they expose them to a variety of experiences and a diverse group of classmates.  In other words, was Judge Sotomayor correct to suggest that a life rich with experiences makes someone wiser?

In some ways, this takes us to the famous contrast of the fox and hedgehog (the fox knows a little about many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing very well).  Is it better to see through a pluralistic view or a well-developed single view?  Which is better, breadth or depth?  Who is wiser, the generalist or the specialist?  It’s difficult to say that one is better than the other, so are we back to the point that diversity matters for the wisdom of the group?

Could Independence Day really be the least American holiday?

“The Fourth of July, or Independence Day, as it has come to be known, is perhaps the most and the least American of holidays. It is the most American because it marks the beginning of the nation, because it rapidly became an occasion for expressing what America is all about, and because it is locally and voluntarily observed. It is the least American because it was created mostly out of English material. “

This excerpt was taken from “The Invention of the Fourth of July” written by David Waldstreicher (Gilder Lehman Institute of American History) and is just one of the interesting resources available in the Resource Connection about our Nation’s birthday. Intrigued? Want to learn more? You can check out the entire article here http://www.historynow.org/06_2005/historian5.html.

You can also check out the other resources that are available on Independence Day at this link or go to the Resource Connection homepage (http://resource.smartdesktop.org/) and see what you can find!

Do you agree with the excerpt above about Independence Day being the most and least American holiday?