Indianapolis is welcoming a new contemporary art museum six years after the city’s last one closed. CAMi, or the Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis, is now open after a multi-year planning process and more than $7.3 million in renovations to a 40,000-square-foot former industrial building.
The CAMi main building is the largest jewel on the five-acre campus and will be the main attraction during the grand opening celebration from May 1 to 3 at 1125 Cruft St. The structure houses galleries, artist studios, a reading and writing room, kitchen to host culinary classes, café, lounging areas, performance venue and spaces for small businesses.
The newly revamped building sits behind the Tube Galleries, formerly known as the Tube Factory artspace. Big Car Collaborative — a nonprofit whose holdings include homes for long-term and visiting resident artists, an art park, amphitheater and the Chicken Chapel of Love in the Garfield Park neighborhood — manages the campus.
Big Car co-founders Shauta Marsh and Jim Walker envision the CAMi campus as a permeable artspace connected to the surrounding community rather than an institutional white box. To further the nontraditional mission, CAMi plans to commission artists for new exhibits continually rather than build its own collection.
Before the space’s grand opening, IndyStar toured the renovated CAMi main building to learn how the museum is different from traditional predecessors.
CAMi focuses on hyperlocal history
Over the past 125 years, the CAMi main building has seen multiple uses, including as a barn for Weber Milk Co. and later part of a complex that belonged to the Tube Processing Corporation, a components manufacturer for aerospace and engine industries. The company donated the building to Big Car in 2021.
Marsh and Walker, who are married, pay homage to the building’s prior uses, preserving architectural details such as wood pillars with worn spots believed to be from ropes where livestock was once tied. The duo also sought exhibitions that pay homage to the building’s history.
An experimental documentary called “Drafts,” by Hoosier artists Jess Dunn and Sylvia Thomas, centers on the site’s history. Other exhibits show Indianapolis history. Will Higgins, a former IndyStar reporter, put together wild and little-known stories about Indy 500 history with “The Speedway’s Attic.”
In “You’re Standing Inside the Instrument: A Score for 19 Buildings,” almost two dozen artists collaborated on a multimedia installation that draws on environmental sounds from buildings around Indianapolis.
Artists “would record some sound that maybe symbolized the building to them. Basically they made music out of it … highlighting some sound related to these spaces to create this sort of symphony of Indianapolis,” said Marsh, CAMi director and chief curator.
Quirky spaces are welcome
Instead of knocking down the walls of a one-time supervisor’s office that awkwardly sits in the middle of the building, Walker and Marsh decided to keep it as is. Walker designed the little space that is now the Office of Provisional Thinking, Indeterminate Outcomes, Nonessential Activities, and Life, also known as O.P.T.I.O.N.A.L.
Inside are a desk and table with activities like “museum in a box,” which holds curiosities visitors can touch. A rotary telephone plays an interview with an artist, and nearby is a notebook that invites people to write down ideas. All, of course, are optional.
“Some people like an art activity, and some people don’t,” Marsh said. “So, it’s like: Do you want to interact with an artist? It’s optional. Do you want to make your own work, or do you want to start with some sort of instruction that’s kind of an inspiration?”
Just off the mezzanine, a few stairs lead to a mini-hallway and book nook, complete with a yellow chair beside a large window. The mezzanine offers seating and an almost aerial view of a massive art installation — a dynamically colorful work made from hand-painted vinyl and reclaimed plastic — that hangs in the main entry gallery. Artist Ivelisse Jiménez, whose studio is in Puerto Rico, designed “Campo de Resonancia” for CAMi, Marsh said.
“There’s a lot of interaction between shadow and light,” she said. “At certain times of the day, it looks like stained glass.”
A radio station operates out of the museum
In 2017, Big Car Collaborative began running the community-focused WQRT 99.1 FM out of a space across the street across from the Tube Galleries. Now the low-power station has moved to a corner studio in the CAMi main building. WQRT plays a mix of locally curated shows as well as a variety of music genres that include ambient, experimental, classical, hip hop and jazz.
Visit local shops and chat with artists at work
In addition to displaying contemporary art throughout its exhibition spaces, CAMi also will show works in progress. Inside the main building are 18 studio artists — including Jingo M. de la Rosa, Jen Broemel, India Hines and Eric D. Stine — whose creations span painting, mixed media, quilting, ceramics, digital illustration and more.
Across the front of the building, five storefronts house small businesses. So far, they include Hepatica Pottery Collective, HQ Books & Records, Indy Plant Room and the art studio Line + Form Art Center.
If you go
CAMi grand opening weekend events: 6 p.m.-10 p.m. May 1. Noon-3 p.m. May 2: a neighborhood celebration with live music and art activities. 9 a.m.-3 p.m. May 3: live music, dance, and vendors selling food, drinks and more.
Where: 1125 Cruft St.
Regular hours: 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday-Friday. (Open until 10 p.m. on First Fridays.) 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Free.
More information: camindy.org
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Contact IndyStar reporter Domenica Bongiovanni at 317-444-7339 or d.bongiovanni@indystar.com. Sign up here for the newsletter she curates about things to do and ways to explore Indianapolis. Find her on Facebook, Instagram or X: @domenicareports.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: How Indy’s new contemporary art museum is different from what you expect
Reporting by Domenica Bongiovanni, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
