Eleven thousand original works of art are at our fingertips as students of Ball State and citizens of Muncie, but few of us take the time to visit them.
Muncie began cultivating its art culture and collection just under 125 years ago with the creation of the Muncie Art Students' League. It had 43 full and five honorary members, according to the book "Side by Side with Coarser Plants; the Muncie Art Movement" by Ned H. Griner, and became a city organization that was pulled into the institution that became Ball State University.
Curator and Director Peter Blume said, "It's a child of the community. It was really created by an early enthusiasm for a public art collection in the city, which later became absorbed into the university."
Several community groups currently support the museum. The most notable are the Friends of the Ball State University Museum of Art and the Ball State University Museum of Art Alliance.
As an outreach program to the community, Friends of the Museum Chair Pam Morgan said, "We support it by just getting it out in the public view and financially, but most of it is by attending events. Basically, our job is to market it."
Increasing community involvement is one of the goals of both the organization and the museum. However, restricted parking and the museum's location on the Ball State campus keep some visitors away. "It's a wonderful museum, but in the middle of the campus it can almost be lost to the community if we weren't ambassadors to go out and tell about it," Morgan said.
Gallery openings, lunch programs, guest speakers and other special events are offered free to the public and are posted on the museum Web site.
Ball State faculty also encourage students to use the museum on an everyday basis, and the museum has created an Art Stamp card teachers can use to keep track of the number of times students visit the museum and attend events.
The museum facilities themselves have also been used as a set for a short film, and on Feb. 26, Assistant Professor of Viola Phillip Tietze will hold a recital in it.
Outside of its significance as a place of interest, the museum is one of the largest and most extensive art museums in central Indiana. "It is an exceptional resource as a museum, very well stocked with what I would call original source material," Blume said, and he regrets not having the space to show more.
To share the collection with people outside the area, the museum is creating online resources. Images and packages of information on artists and types of artwork are available on the Web site, and Blume said the museum is working to add more to the education and research area of the site.
Nothing replaces visiting the museum and experiencing the art in person. Junior Art Education major Leah Brack said, "There's a lot of great stuff down there. I was impressed by some of the Greek pottery. It's really cool, and you wouldn't expect the Ball State Art Museum to have stuff like that."
Every visitor has a different experience at the museum. "It will always continue to change. People have a lot of strange conceptions that museums can be done, and, like a good library, they are never done. Even with a collection that is finite, the dialog among works of art will always change."
Museum hours are 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday through Sunday. For more information, visit the Web site at www.bsu.edu/artmuseum or call (765) 285-5242.
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