Favorites from outstanding Indianapolis Museum of Art, pt 1

Happy World on a Cloud, FriendsWithYou, 2021; visitors are welcomed to Newfields with a message of hope and admiration for nature's wonders; this pair of artists formed with the intention of inspiring kindness, joy and love through acts of culture creation

Jimson Weed, Georgia O'Keefee, 1936; cosmetic entrepreneur Elizabeth Arden commissioned O'Keefee to paint Jimson Weed for the exercise room of her Fifth Avenue Salon in NYC; I wonder what the artist thought of her work going in a glorified gym

Self-Portrait, Rembrandt van Rijn, ca. 1629; Rembrandt produced no fewer than 75 self-portraits over the course of his career, capturing every phase of his life with an unflinching eye

Untitled, Frantisek Vizner, 1993; the Museum's glass collection was a bequest from Gene and Marilyn Glick; Mariilyn became a fan of contemporary studio art glass after a visit to the Toledo Museum of Art

New York, New Haven and Hartford, Edward Hopper, 1931; painted during the Depression and named for an East Coast railroad line, Hopper's rural landscapes have an abandoned atmosphere that echoes the loneliness and isolation of his urban scenes

Portrait of Monsieur Pool, Albert Dubois-Pillet, 1887; the sober likeness of this French officer is one of the earliest examples of Neo-Impressionist portraiture; Pool wears his cross of the Legion of Honor which likely was the inspiration for the portrait

The Clowes Pavilion features an 11,500 lb, 47 by 31-ft LED ceiling at the center of the medieval cloister-inspired courtyard surrounded by some of the Museum's most famous European paintings; I visited while a popular concert series was taking place

Longcase Regulator Clock, Andre-Charles Boulle, ca. 1673; this clock's opulent veneer of ebony, tortoiseshell, pewter, and brass includes a gilt bronze figure of Chronos, the ancient Greek personification of time, who is shown holding up its dial

Bubble Boy #194, Richard Marquis, 1988; with a glass technique called murrine, multicolored rods of glass are sliced into discs and arranged in a pattern; the discs are then fused together into sheets which can be shaped and manipulated into various forms

The Young Artist, Thomas Mickell Burnham, 1840; this painting was intended to appeal to Boston abolitionists, with its depiction of the nation's children - symbolic of the nation's future - setting aside racial issues to play together

Folded Circle Dynamics Red Phase III, Fletcher Benton, 1976; Benton was a central figure in the kinetic art movement of the 1960s and 70s, with this being his second largest sculpture; there's a small motor that moves plexiglass pieces back and forth

Wide-Mouthed Flower Basket, Tanabe Chikuunsai I, 1919; bamboo basket weaving has been a Japanese tradition for centuries and can take decades to master; this artist cut and gathered his own bamboo and could tell its pliability based on if it was growing in sun or shade

The Indianapolis Museum of Art’s impressive 11,000-square-foot Design Gallery is the largest collection gallery devoted to modern and contemporary design of any museum in the country

LOVE, 1970, Robert Indiana; first produced in 1964, this was the artist's first monumental LOVE sculpture; born Robert Clark, he changed his name (in tribute to his home state) to avoid confusion with two other artists with the same name

The Park at Mortefontaine, Jean Joseph Xavier Bidauld, 1806; this park was owned by Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's older brother; after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the younger Bonaparte fled France with his art collection and built an estate in NJ

Cup, Jean-Valentin Morel, 1854-55; this stunning piece is made from bloodstone (jasper), gold, enamels, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and cameos; Indianapolis is the fourth-most populous state capital after Phoenix, Austin, and Columbus

Beech Trees, William McKendree Snyder, undated; the artist's favorite subject was the beech forests near his home along the Ohio River in Madison, IN; he painted with great attention to accuracy rather than in the Impressionist style popular at the time

Buildings in Winter, Cecil F. Head, 1935; this Indiana native was more interested in strong compositions and rich color schemes rather than social statements; this work was exhibited at the 1939 New York World's Fair