My mom lives in the Chicago suburbs and we live half-way across the country in Arlington, VA. In order to bridge the gap, approximately once a year we vacation with my mom in a midwestern city located between our respective homes. Last year, we had a wonderful time exploring Cleveland, OH (click here to read about it). This summer, we chose Indianapolis, IN, which was all sorts of awesome.
We kicked off our sightseeing adventures by spending a day at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which has a rather large sculpture garden as well as a huge art & nature park. When the kids saw the sculpture pictured above, they decided it looked "like a mom." And then they proceeded to hang all over her.
The museum's grounds include a huge mansion surrounded by formal gardens.
My favorite part of touring the grounds was running all over the art and nature park. We especially loved reading our way through Kim Beck's A Flock of Signs and jumping all over Atelier Van Lieshout's Funky Bones sculpture. And T couldn't stop asking us about the lake's mysterious "pirate boat".
Eventually, exhausted and hot, we decided to check out the inside of the museum. But first we drank several ounces of lemonade in the cafeteria.
The IMA's fourth floor contained some fun, interactive kid-friendly contemporary art (unfortunately we couldn't take pictures). James Turrell's grey square looked like a boring painting, until we stuck our hands through it and discovered a window of fog. Magic. And Do-Ho Suh's Floor allowed us to walk all over thousands (millions?) of little plastic figures all raising their hands to hold up the glass beneath our feet.
For our final stop, we checked out the museum's Star Studio - full of various art supplies, some toys, and ipads for the kids to create with. I wish all art museums had a similar space for children. On weekends, the Star Studio hosts even more activities.
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