The First and Last 'Indiana Artists' in Indianapolis

Jurors Patterson Sims (left) and Kit Basquin interact with MXYZ/MIMOSA
 by Roger Laib, 70th Indiana Artists Show, IMA

The first Indiana Artists exhibition in Indianapolis was held at the Herron Art Institute in April of 1908. The 70th Indiana Artists Show biennial was held in June 1985 at Indianapolis Museum of Art. 

The show arose from earlier annual exhibits of Indiana Artists held in Richmond, Indiana in 1898 onward. For a period of time, after its establishment in Indianapolis until about 1925, it was the same show traveling between the two cities. After that time, each city would separately organize and host a distinct exhibit of Indiana Artists annually. In about 1960, the event in Indianapolis would become a biennial event hosted by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. 

Not historical in nature, the Indianapolis exhibits, in their own time, would showcase the contemporary offerings of Indiana's premier and professional artists. The styles of the artists over time would range from academic, naturalist and impressionist at the beginning, all the way to minimalist, post-modern, and neo-expressionist by the end.

In between were periods of modern art, social realism and regionalism that were followed by surrealism, abstraction, pop and minimalism.  Throughout the run of the exhibition history, the capture and representation of the Hoosier local landscape, by various means, would be of preeminent concern to many Indiana artists.

Prelude to a Tradition.

Exploring the weeks and months around the start of the inaugural Indiana Artists exhibition at Herron  in April 1908, it is discovered that the show did not arise out of nowhere. The Indianapolis art scene of the time was not some creative nature abhorring a vacuum. The reputations of many city artists had already been established by then, and many young artists were following in their footsteps. The John Herron Art School and its museum, the John Herron Art Institute had been established in 1902, and was to host many varied art exhibitions, including some annuals, in its earliest years. 

For example, the 23rd Annual Exhibition of the Art Association of Indianapolis was winding up in January 1908. It featured national, regional and local art with pieces being lent for that year's exhibit by Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Cincinnati Museum Association, to name just a few. Of note were paintings by Frank Duveneck of Cincinnati, a talented artist and well-known art instructor in that city.  

Just a month later, the 12th Annual Exhibit of the Society of Western Artists which was held at Herron in February 1908.  This exhibit series had launched the wider recognition and further successes of Hoosier Group originals like T. C. Steele, J. Ottis Adams and William Forsyth. T. C. Steele was represented by the Brown County landscape, The Hill Country, and Adams presented several works from the area near his Brookville studio home, The Hermitage, such as the picture Winter Morning. The exhibit also included the painting, The Willows, by Dorothy Morlan. This picture was also painted in Brookville, by Miss Morlan, a resident of Irvington. The Willows was noteworthy by its acceptance for exhibition in the 103rd Annual Exhibit of American Art in Philadelphia for later that year. 

The First One (and the Second).

On a newspaper page shared with many ads showing the latest touring cars and automobiles on offer, some made by car manufacturers located downtown, an exhibition of Indiana Artists was announced for the first time in Indianapolis.  The March 21, 1908, Indianapolis News reads,

“Beginning April 4 and closing May 4 there will be an exhibition of original works in oil, water color, black and white and in sculpture by Indiana resident artists at the John Herron Art Institute. The artists of Indiana are invited participate. Works are to be submitted to a jury of selection and must be delivered at the institute on or before March 28...”

Lucille Morehouse, the art writer for The Indianapolis Star, was not yet on the scene. She would debut about 1913, so the exhibit lacks critical observation by local newspaper writers. However, an inventory of artists and some of their works is contained in an April 4 column in The Indianapolis News,

“There are thirty-seven of the home artists represented in the Indiana display, representing a total of 118 numbers in the catalogue.  A preliminary survey of the exhibit shows that Mr. Steele...has three studies rich with the warmth of autumn coloring and filled with the spirit of the State he loves and loves to paint. There is also a portrait of his daughter. William Forsyth has a group of nine works, two of which are water colors. Otto Stark is represented by six pictures. Emma B. King shows five. Dorothy Morlan also has a group, five in number. R. B. Gruelle exhibits three pictures...”

Other local artists are listed, ending with a note about a younger artist new to the scene at the time. Simon Baus, a future Irvington Group artist, the article writes, “shows two studies in oil.”

And so, the first Indiana Artists show in Indianapolis ended. Its success, or not, was not mentioned in the papers at the time, however it would return for an encore the next year.

That following year, the exhibit, not yet anticipating its future legacy, was not referred to as an annual event.  The February 4, 1909, Indianapolis Star, provides coverage of the show, with a bit more critical observation than the previous year's show,

“Paintings that form an interesting and surprising display of the accomplishments of Indiana artists were placed on exhibition yesterday...There are 164 paintings, drawings and pieces of sculpture...all of them by Indiana artists and most of them of high artistic merit...

The one thing thing which strikes a visitor first of all in looking down the long gallery...is the extreme freshness of color. It is a marked display of the trend of art during the last few years when painters have begun to give color and lights their true value and have ceased to soften colors down to a lower scale. The pictures, with few exceptions, are in unmixed, fresh colors,  and in the landscapes the brilliance of sunlight is given its true value, a piece of artistic daring that could not have been attempted a few years ago.”

Just one painting, and not a landscape, is described in greater detail in the article,

“A painting which is creating great interest is that of the late Herman Lieber by T. C. Steele. It was loaned by the German House and is given a prominent place in the exhibit.”

Portrait of Herman Lieber by T. C. Steele, 1908,
Athenaeum, Indianapolis

The article seems to reference the extraordinary Portrait of Herman Lieber by Steele that is still on display in the Rathskeller restaurant in downtown's Athenaeum, in the 'Vonnegut' dining room.

The Last One, from the Jurors.

Perhaps it was known by the powers that be at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1985, that the 70th Indiana Artists Show, was to be the last. Many local artists were caught off balance, though, when that turned out to be the case. That was two years in the future, though, out of sight and out of mind. 

As mentioned above, the exhibit, since about 1960 had become  a biennial event, showing in odd-numbered years, and wasn't set to happen again until 1987.

The show in 1985 was appearing in the summer slot, a slot shared by the IMA's other biennial, the Painting and Sculpture Today exhibit. That show was held in the off, even years. It was also a large group show, but it featured national trends in contemporary art, highlighting artists from New York and Chicago. 

Jurors statements regarding the Indiana Artists appeared at the fore of the catalog publication that accompanied the 70th Show. 

Kit Basquin, an art critic in Milwaukee, and a former Indiana art gallery owner, describes some parameters that guided her decisions as a juror,

“Qualities considered are compositional resolution, controlled technique, originality, risk, energy, and intensity.”  

She noted, among the artists and their work,

“A sense of isolation prevails. There seem to be few artists interacting in a visual dialogue with each other, and few constructing a dialogue with artists outside.”

Juror Hollis Sigler, an artist in Chicago, describes her decisions,

“I will say that tried to choose those that pushed their ideas successfully.  In good works, the viewer is not distracted from the spell of the work by either unrefined technique of by self-consciousness. The distraction caused by poor technique is self-evident. Though I would choose every time a work of poor technique, that was ambitious conceptually, over a work poorly thought out but expertly accomplished.”  

Specifically about paintings, she directed the following remarks,

“Many artists, I felt, needed to work on color. Color is absolutely basic. Until one understands the many aspects of color, one cannot communicate with paint.”

About the show in general, she sums up her observations, ending with a prescient question,

“The (70th Show) has a bit of everything, different styles, different media. I chose what I thought pushed ahead, showed originality and good, quality craftsmanship.  I think it represents what is happening in Indiana in the 1980s – a diversity, but within a growing national culture. Indiana, like the rest of the country, is becoming less regional in its thoughts about art.  For better or worse, the state is more connected with the large, major art centers. Sometimes I believe in the goodness of this, how it broadens all of us. But then, too, will we all begin to look, dress, think alike?”

Finally, juror Patterson Sims, Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, expresses himself in a more obtuse, even magical manner. He writes of the selection process itself, as if observing a seance, 

“There is a kind of trance intelligence that guides jurors as the selection process proceeds. Awareness becomes almost premeditated about what is wrong and what is right to an exhibition. A balance of media and attitude hovers at the edge of conscious thought to separate the affirmed from the rejected.”

He mentions that the processes and choices among the three jurors, himself included, 

“...were ripe with reservation and disagreement, yet they reflect – like an opinion poll made from the ideas of thousands  to mirror the views of millions – a vivid consensus about...(art)...in Indiana in 1984-85.”

Sims notes a particular common theme, mentioned by juror Sigler as an attribute of the Indiana artists themselves, here by Sims as an attribute of their art, 

“...though the isolation of the individual may be shared as a subject...(the) means of expression are radically different.” 

From a Critic, Like an EF5.

Two years prior, in 1983, the 69th Indiana Artists was reviewed critically by Indianapolis Star arts writer, Steve Mannheimer. Perhaps his measured and thoughtful remarks can be summed  up simply by saying that the exhibit was convoluted in whole and lacking in parts. Mannheimer ended his review with suggestions for possible future changes regarding the show. Perhaps someone somewhere was listening.

(Those observations are discussed in greater detail in an earlier blog about Patrick King and his pioneering Contemporary Art gallery on Massachusetts Avenue in the 1980s, and can be found here.)

With his review of the 70th Show, Mannheimer would have one last bite at the Indiana Artists apple, as it turns out. He finds a connective thread running through the show that was not noticed, or at least not mentioned, by the jurors of the show.  The headline of his Art World column in the Indianapolis Star on June 30, 1985, says it all –  Whirlwind of artistry hits museum galleries.

With exuberant, writerly finesse, Mannheimer's opening paragraph sets the tone,

“Look out Oz, here comes Indiana.

From Terry Copen's grand-prize winning Son Hero to the rambling shambles of Roger Laib's MXYZ/MIMOSA, probably the most controversial and certainly one of the worst works included, the 70th Indiana Artists Show spins with a tale of cyclonic energy.

The maelstrom or whirlpool or cyclone has been a pervasive artistic image in recent years, fluttering the neo-expressionist coattails with the same intensity it riles rural roadside cattails.”

Wow – mighty hard, the wind she blows, as Mannheimer notes. 

He relays in his unique and singular voice, a storm damage report, as he surveys the state of both the ruins and the firmer foundations in the aftermath of Hurricane Art. 

He starts with Laib's  MXYZ/MIMOSA,  

“There was mythic scale and allegory in pictures of clipperships crushed by icebergs or tiny mountain villages swept away by snowslides. Such grand drama. However, is precisely what's missing in works like Laib's huge, cantankerous conglomeration of suspended leaves and sticks, bark, lumber, shutters, canvas and a parachute.

Large as a mastodon, it resembles nothing so much as the forced crossbreeding of a house and a tree at gale-force velocity. Aggressive in its rawness, totally undeflected by considerations of craft or design intelligence, it has all the presence of a 300-pound left tackle with a high voice, which is provided by a radio in the center of the construction playing loud enough to be bothersome but not quite disruptive.” 

About the show's grand prize winner, Terry Copen, Mannheimer writes,

“In Copen's winning work, the Son Hero stands waist-deep in a whirlpool. Down by his side, he clutches a fistful of artist's brushes painted with sketchy linearity and suggesting a bouquet and/or an effusive physical release. 

Copen's other and actually better work, convenient for our purposes named Whirlpool, depicts a figure again half-submerged, reaching around to encircle then point to a smaller figure's eyes.”

Please see color images of Terry Copen's work,
including Son Hero here

Mannheimer sees the second painting as a pun, of artist as eye and seer, riding a whirlpool and recognizing it for what it is,

 “(a symbol of)...the modern quest for the steady-state pulse of the gyroscope, great inward acceleration without the fear of flying apart, excitement without risk.”

Perhaps a final two examples that most readily support Mannheimer's premise about a windy theme breezing through the show, would be work by Steve Paddack and Richard Burkett,

“Obviously, we hear the wind blowing through Steve Paddack's Monuments, Windy Day, a rather pretty skyscape half way between (Gianbattista) Tiepolo and a tornado. Two smokestacks bear a family resemblance to the funnel clouds Paddack has painted in the past.

Richard Burkett's two matching ceramic sculptures, Midwestern Vision (No. 2 and No. 3), both feature square little clay houses tipped up on a corner, pyramid roofs surmounted by funnel clouds.”

After discussing more examples that veer further off the Tornado Alley he drove in on, Mannheimer sums up his thoughts at the end,

“Of course the bottom line of all such shows is the futility of any grasping at interpretive straws. Any and all overarching theorizing must be done with the same running desperation which jurors, no matter how qualified, necessarily apply to the herculean task of making so many judgments.

Only 81 works by 64 artists are left from and initial submission of more than 2,000 slides by 681 artists. Pretty much the same effects, that is to say the same relative coherence within diversity, could be achieved by a lottery of every artist in the state with an art school pedigree.

Actually, come to think of it, we may still be in Kansas. It would probably be hard to tell the difference.” 

Controversial Aftermath and New (or Final?) Frontiers.  

Just as the first Indiana Artists exhibit in Indianapolis did not start in a vacuum, the last was not to be an end all and be all either.

Regionals, of the art exhibit kind, had been losing their luster for awhile by the mid-1980s. Certainly, turns out, that was going to be the trend in Indianapolis. 

Other trends and series would spring up and gain traction for awhile, such as the Indiana Artist of the Month series, and Forefront Gallery offerings, of local and national artists respectively, at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The Arts Postcard Series sponsored by Arts Insight, a monthly art magazine in Indianapolis, showcased Indiana artists in a new annual series that began in the early 1980s.   

Nevertheless, there was consternation in the local arts community as a result of recent developments in the local art scene. 

Two art collectives arose almost simultaneously that spring, and would join forces in the wake of the official announcement that the Indiana Artists exhibition had indeed been canceled for that year. 

Marion Garmel, in her Brush Strokes column in The Indianapolis News on April 8, 1987, notes the beginnings of one such group,

“Richard Nickolson is a small-boned, soft-spoken professor of painting, with a long, gnome-like beard. He doesn't look like the sort of man to start a revolution.

But he is angry and he's not going to take it any more.

'There is a need for us to have a voice, but not a voice that says the Indianapolis Museum of Art is the only voice for artists, or the Indiana Repertory Theatre is the only voice for actors,' Nickolson told a capacity crowd at the first meeting of the Coalition of Indianapolis Artists at the 431 Gallery Monday night.”

Garmel writes about some sources for the artistic community's displeasure,

“Among other things, they are 'dismayed' that establishment institutions got top priority at the recent forums called by the Indianapolis Arts Council to develop a long-range cultural plan for Indianapolis.

'It means individual artists will be given the shaft again,' said artist-writer Doris Hails.”

An April 12, Indianapolis Star article written by Anne Cunningham discusses the second arts advocacy group formed earlier that February, also present at the meeting,

“The United Artists and Media Exchange, representing 40 Afro-American artists...formed...to provide a voice for its members. Its chairman, Charles E. Tripp, attended the Coalition meeting. With 45 visual artists, actors, musicians and writers attending, the floor was opened to a rapid-fire discussion of problems the members in each artistic discipline face.”

Cunningham penned a later article, also in The Star, May 24, that focused on a major complaint of the local Indiana artists that spring,

“The biennial Indiana Artists Show, a juried exhibit which would normally be shown this summer, has been canceled. The Indianapolis Star has received and published several letters to the editor, written by local artists who are upset by the cancellation. They have charged that the IMA is shirking its responsibility to Indiana artists, and that they have been denied an opportunity to showcase their works for visitors who will attend the (Pan-Am) games.” 

Cunningham, to her credit, seems to have adopted the controversy as a personal cause celebre, and would continue writing about developments in her columns in The Indianapolis Star. 

On July 26, she provided an update on the activities and plans of the Coalition,

“...in July, 16 members of the Coalition's steering committee met in a Morris Building artist's studio to finalize details for A Creative Affair, an art exhibition and performance event that will open Friday night at the Goodman Building, 20 West Washington Street.” 

As a side note, the Goodman Building, at 20 West, was right next door to 24 West, built in 1897 for the H. (Herman) Lieber Company, which specialized in picture framing, bookbinding and art supplies up until 1979.

The Coalition pop-up show was reviewed with a caustic brevity by Marion Garmel, a normally cheerful and upbeat writer, in the August 8, 1987, Indianapolis News,

“Indianapolis artists, upset that , in order to house its Latin American show, the museum of art canceled its biennial Indiana artists show, have mounted a show of their own on four floors of the downtown Goodman Quad. The best thing about it is the colorful banner over the door proclaiming A Creative Affair. Nearly 90 artists are exhibiting everything from mock altar triptychs to a dark and shadowy copy of Rembrandt's Self Portrait.”

Cunningham would provide slightly more detailed coverage of the show, albeit critical as well, in her column in The Star on August 9, 

“The show affirms our respect for the work of artists like Richard E. Nickolson and Ed Sanders, and introduced us to the talent of other artists like Brian Fick. Yet, the depth of the city's art scene  remains at issue. Many viewers will leave the show with the feeling that this city has some good artists and a lot of work to do.” 

But perhaps Cunningham's most prophetic remarks are about the synthesis of artists self organizing their own exhibits and large, raw spaces downtown,

“A Creative Affair proves that city artists can organize and work together toward a common goal...It certainly suggests that the city's immediate downtown area is a perfect place for a large, noncommercial, contemporary art exhibition  space to compliment the existing commercial galleries.”

The Stutz Factory complex of buildings, was the birthplace of the mass production of the famous Bearcat automobile. Its founding at 10th and Capitol was near in time and place to the Indiana Artists Exhibition a little across town. The Stutz would become a showcase for  exhibits of the kind envisioned by Cunningham; large, raw and downtown.

In 1993, annual artists studio open house nights would begin at the Stutz, and grow into a local cultural phenomenon. 

The Faris Building, in south downtown, would hold similar events, even earlier, although on a more ad hoc basis, when it was still known as the Morris Building in the 1980s.  

Both large, sprawling warehouses would hold well-attended annual open house events throughout the 1990s.   

Contemporary Indiana Artists, in the calm after the whirlwind caused by the cancel and end of the longtime Indianapolis exhibit in 1987, were left drifting on a Sargasso Sea of sorts.  Like jetsam, then flotsam, they would self-organize in an effort to thrive, or at least not drown. 

But without the deeper pocket megaphones of the art institutions and non-profits, without the bandwidth of the official councils and forums –  in the echo of their large, raw and isolated space – would anyone hear them scream?  

Mark Diekhoff, January 2026

See also: A Homecoming for artist Terry Copen

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

The Epic Dramas of Artist Elmer Taflinger – Act Four

A Gallery By Any Other Name.

The November 11, 1933 Indianapolis Star introduced a new gallery to the Indianapolis art scene. It was a gallery to play a small, but not insignificant, part in the Elmer Taflinger drama. Lucille Morehouse explains in her column that day,

“An exhibition of William Forsyth has been selected to open the newly established art gallery on Monument circle that is to be conducted in connection with the Lyman Brothers art store. Damian Lyman and Carl Lyman, sons of members of the original art firm, are co-directors of the gallery, which has been opened on the fourth floor, over the store. The fact that the room was used as a studio by T. C. Steele, many years ago, seems to dedicate it, in an endearing way, as a gallery in which to display Indiana art.

The dignified and gentle nature of the artist who had his studio in the same room in the early days of Indianapolis seems, in some indefinable way, in an outstanding feature of the room, an early fireplace whose mantel of classic design suggests a stateliness and elegance of an earlier period.

The fireplace, it might be said, is apt to give a permanent name to Lyman's new gallery. 'The Fireplace gallery' has been suggested as a name by Elmer Taflinger. And it seems especially appropriate.”

Indeed Taf's suggestion of a name would stick, and within a few weeks time he would displaying his first one-man show at Lyman's Fireplace Gallery. Again, always the intrepid reporter, Lucille Morehouse provides the coverage in her In the World of Art  column in The Star on January 14, 1934,

“The one-man show of fifty-seven drawings by Elmer E. Taflinger at Lyman's Fireplace Gallery on Monument circle enters its second and final week tomorrow. This statement of itself should be enough to crowd the gallery throughout the entire week. But when it is said that each one of the drawings was selected by a different person, as a means of assembling the exhibit, the show takes on additional interest. When these selections were made, chiefly by artists, students and models, although the list also includes names of Indianapolis architects, photographers, sign painters, lawyers, insurance men, laboratory dentists and others who from time to time visited the studio, there were no price marks to add their silent influence on the selection.”

Taflinger explained to Morehouse that he had preserved about 200 drawings in total from which to choose the exhibit. Most of those 200 produced during the prior five years, although a grand total  of between 5,000 to 6,000 had been made. The vast majority of the larger number have been lost due to wear and tear over the many years of running his school.

Morehouse describes a few selections in the show as follows,

“Clifton Wheeler choice of a feminine nude, seated, in charcoal, is one of the best all round drawings of the nude. Because it is a more difficult pose with more problems of foreshortening, the reclining male figure, also in charcoal, selected by Paul Jones, would probably be placed first as a skillful accomplishment in study of the nude.

Theodore Steele, called Ted by his friends, son of...Brandt...and grandson of T. C. Steele...selected a drawing in sanguine of an old man with a humped back. Cornet Wood selected a sanguine drawing, two figures, a boy and a girl, wearing everyday clothes and resting on a divan.

Wallace Richards selected a delicately penciled nude group on a gold background. Jean Messick's choice is an inspirational figure, a Juno type of woman.”

Morehouse described the her overall impression when entering the gallery room filled with Taflinger's work,

“The sense of color is so very definite as one enters the gallery that it takes a second look to bring a realization that the work is largely in black and white. Of course there is a generous sprinkling of pastel drawing – gloriously colorful, never gay an flashing, but with a glowing brilliancy and satisfying contrast and depth of tone.” 

It seems appropriate that Taflinger's first solo show would be of the drawing studies that were part and parcel to his teaching methods and his art school. It is unclear how many paintings of the Green Goddess or My Body is Weary variety that he had produced, or how often, to that point I his career. His specialty was life drawing, almost exclusively, rather than landscape, or still life. He was certainly able to whip out figure painting and portraits, as was seen in his flash painting duo-portrait performance at the state fair the prior year.  But again, figure drawings would be his bread and butter. 

Taflinger possessed a looming and larger ambition. The creation of a mural of his own.  Perhaps the lingering sting of the Thomas Hart Benton matter, or maybe his own grandiose impulses would propel him toward its impending creation. Maybe Taf's first thoughts on the project were more about what it ought not be, as opposed to a clear idea of what it would be. The March 21, 1936, Indianapolis Times sheds light on his thoughts on the regionalist and social realist Benton proteges at the time, when it reports, “Elmer Taflinger calls the Roosevelt mural painters the Depressionists.” It can be inferred that Taflinger's mocking quip is aimed at artists working with the government's Section of Fine Arts program to place art work in federal buildings, most notable post offices.  

Social realism would not be his goal, apparently, as he planned a more class-neutral work of more timeless and universal appeal.  His plans would evolve and coalesce into a tripartite series of large canvases, designed to hang snugly side by side, carefully drawn, and balanced beautifully in color and tone.

Utilizing a similar broad and collaborative input, as he did for selections for the Lyman show, Taflinger would again amass a list of fanboy favorites, this time from a survey of science experts, for inclusion in an encyclopedic Rosetta Stone, his mural of mind, man and nature. The project would capture his attention and harness his creative talents in the years to come. 

Apotheosis of Science by Elmer Taflinger, central panel
appearing in Science Monthly, 1940

Taflinger's Vitruvian Show-Stopper.

The finished mural, Apotheosis of Science, was complete and ready for its debut in the fall of 1939. The Star art writer, Lucille Morehouse, covered the unveiling with her long an thorough review on September 21,

“The painting framed as three panels, is in reality one continuous design, executed in oils on canvas...”

The overall subject matter of the mural can be simplified to say that it contains a central symbolic figure amid an array of many secondary human figures, animals and plants that represent a broad swath of natural and scientific creation and classification. Morehouse goes into more detail regarding the works appearance and design, 

“In the figure groups the color is kept rich and dark. But in the design...concerned with the lower animals and the plants...the color is light-toned and luminous....

...the artist...constructed his design on the Greek basis of the circle and the square. And it was upon this basis of geometrical lines that the whole composition was worked out with mathematical precision.”

Morehouse first elaborates on the stunning central figure of the composition, Taflinger's take on Vitruvian Man. The four-legged, four-armed man thus becomes a basis for design and proportion for the entire work as Taflinger utilizes the knowledge of the Greeks and as immortalized by Leonardo da Vince. Taflinger's universal man has three faces, if not three heads entirely, representing the anthropological divide of race among human beings. About the three-faced head, Morehouse writes,

“There need be no explanation...to see that the central and larger head is a carefully painted portrait of Leonardo da Vinci...well along in years, with piercing eyes beneath shaggy brows and with long hair and beard.”

The central placement of da Vinci, as Morehouse quotes Taflinger, is because “he holds his place as the outstanding man of all time.”

A latent, perhaps coincidental, misogyny in the work is observed by Morehouse when she notes that nary a woman is included in the plethora of scientific notables portrayed in the mural. Taflinger and his brother-in-law, Robert L. Black, the Manual High School science teacher who commissioned the mural for his classroom, worked together on the project. Taflinger created and executed the design and painting, while Black, in the early days of preparation and research, submitted a questionnaire to over 100 of the country's eminent scientists for their input as to who should be included in the work. Perhaps the intention was to solicit a wide range of suggestions, but the male echo chamber that sought and suggested names, came up empty on the feminine, whether mythological, historical or contemporary.   

The Indianapolis News on September 23 also provides a review of Apotheosis of Science, less detailed and more as a summary of essential features,

“The Apotheosis of Science, the latest mural of Elmer Taflinger, was hung today in the biology classroom of Robert Lovell Black, for whom it was painted, at Emmerich Manual Training High School. The mural, 21 x 5 feet in size, has attracted attention in the field of art and science which the artist has combined in the symbolical presentation of the foremost scientists of all ages.

Five years of research and study went into the making of the mural, with more than 100 scientists being consulted in selection of the figures in the composition.

Frames as three panels, the painting is one continuous design. In the central panel, the complete classification of plants and animals are represented. The panels on each side  of the central are grouped with outstanding men of success.” 

Lucille Morehouse writes a second major article on Apotheosis... with a summary of a long and detailed interview with Taflinger in his studio where he offers a minutia of details regarding the subject matter, design and creation of the piece.  Included this Star piece dated September 24, is a photograph of Taflinger painting on the canvas, on what appears to be the left of the three panels.

An article penned by Robert L. Black would appear in The Scientific Monthly magazine in February of 1940. The article contains photographs of all three panels of the mural. The most cohesive explanation of the mural's composition and intentions are provided in the article, when Black writes, in part,

“The center panel portrays  representative plants and animals of each of the main classes...the center portion of the central panel contains four Greek scientists of the ancient world, two on either side, each symbolical of one of the four ancient elements, fire water, earth and air. They are placed in defensive positions, guarding life...

In the side panels are shown forty-eight of the great scientists of all ages...and arranged according to their field of work rather than the period in which they lived. The men in the left panel  were interested in living things...botany, zoology...genetics and medicine...while those on the right panel dealt mainly with pure science...mathematics, physics, astronomy and chemistry.

Each scientist has reached a summit...and is portrayed as standing on a mountain top...each...holds in his hand a symbol of his accomplishment.

The foreground of the picture  shows the remains of great periods of civilization, which have risen and fallen while the search for truth...has continued...”

  

The Black article is also useful in that it provides a complete list of the scientific figures included in the work.

Apotheosis of Science was to gain notoriety as it began a tour of cities in the eastern U.S. in the fall of 1940 and spring of 1941. The mural was displayed at scientific conferences held in Philadelphia and New York, as reported in The Indianapolis Star at the time. 

In his old age, Taflinger was to relay the subsequent history of the mural to Indianapolis News writer 

Marion Garmel. In her December 18, 1974 article, she writes,

“The Apotheosis of Science...has hung in Manual and Shortridge High Schools, been on display in the Museum of Arts and Science at Rockefeller Center in New York, and now hangs on one of the gigantic walls of Taflinger's carriage house studio.”

And that is the story of Taflinger's revenge, his Apotheosis...

A  broad salvo of a summation. A declaration of riposte and rebuttal. A crucible of wonder and riddles.

 

A mural of his own.

Wasted Talent or Wonder Years?

The war years and-post war decade, for Elmer Taflinger, were filled with an array of activity memorialized in the press. Taflinger's PR machine would not stop, nor would it slow, even as his production of fine art did.  In this period, Taflinger, the man of art usually played second fiddle to Ol' Taf the trickster, the raconteur, the sooth-seer or the odd ball.

Elmer Taflinger creating pastel portrait of DePauw coed
source The Indianapolis Star

In January and February of 1945, as the war in Europe was grinding toward a close, Elmer Taflinger made the papers by participating in an art event that seemed a riff off his earlier stunt of painting the winning state fair dress-making beauty (and the prize calf) of a few years prior. As reported in the January 3, 1945, South Bend Tribune,

 

“Five prominent Hoosier artists will come to DePauw university Saturday to choose the most pulchritudinous of DePauw's campus and paint a coed of their choice, it was announced ...by Prof. A. Reid Winsey, head of the art department...

DePauw beauty winners will have their photographs and pictures of the artist' portraits published in the 1945 Mirage, student yearbook...”

A few weeks later on February 16, in The Indianapolis Star, a photograph appeared showing Taflinger at work at his easel, painting a pastel portrait of his chosen coed, junior Miss Helen Davidson, of Kirkwood, Missouri.  The photograph also notes the other participating artists as Earl Beyer, Randolph Coats, Ruth Pratt Bobbs and Edmund Brucker. 

On the same day, in the same paper, there was an article about a pageant in honor of the 50-Year anniversary of Emmerich Manual Training High School. The gala would include dining, dancing, a double-header basketball game, and music including a special march, Our Golden Heritage, written by Charles Henzie, the manual band director.

The article referenced an art exhibit, as part of the festivities, to include both former and current artists and art students, and highlighted the recollections of former student Elmer Taflinger,

“Elmer Taflinger, local artist and mural painter, is one of those represented in the exhibit. Taflinger 

wanted to study art, so he enrolled in one art class for a double period, and one cooking class – also a double period – to keep the record straight – and slipped away from pans to pencils so that he could spend four hours a day  with the master (presumably the late Otto Stark, of Hoosier Group fame and former Manual art instructor).  

In the days surrounding this event, Taflinger was mentioned in another article and pictured in a photograph of related interest in the same newspaper. On February 17, he was pictured in a photographed with a pretty Manual senior art student, Miss Thelma Williams, installing the the portrait of Otto Stark in the anniversary exhibit. And on February 19, an article reported that Taflinger was to paint a portrait of the late Milo Stuart, one of three principals in the school's history. The first principal, Charles Emmerich, was painted by T. C. Steele and the second principal, E. H. Kemper McComb, was painted by Marie Goth. It is noted that all three painters were Manual graduates.    

During the same period, Taflinger was a regular source of gee-whiz material to Indianapolis Star columnist, Lowell Nussbaum, and his The Things I Hear! column. A torrent of offbeat, human interest and comic material was most certainly required for the sustenance of a daily column by the writer. Taflinger was such a source, judging from his mentions by Nussbaum, whose fire hose of offbeat antics just didn't run dry.

 

Nussbaum was to cover Taflinger, the artist, countless times from the '40s through the '60s, but particular noteworthy were a couple of episodic stretches where he was to present humorous bits about Taflinger and his cats, and Taflinger and his search for nude models, over several columns each, at a time. An example, shown almost in its entirety to demonstrate the homespun inanity of the coverage, and because it is a typical example of many such mentions of Taf by Nussbaum over those years,  in the September 17, 1945, Indianapolis Star reads as follows, 

“Elmer Taflinger, the artist, doesn't know which is worse – cats or rats. Sometimes he thinks maybe it's the cats. No rats, he theorizes, ever brought a cat into his studio, but his cats – well....

Some time back, the cats dragged in what looked like a mouse. Much to Elmer's disgust, the well fed cats just played with the mouse, but didn't kill it.  The 'mouse' stayed around and eventually grew into a full-grown rat. The cats wouldn't bother it. One day Elmer discovered the rat had eaten the insulation off the wiring in his expensive electronic recording device.  

Then he saw red. From the nearby Propylaeum, he borrowed a mouse trap. Nothing happened. He lectured the cats about their duties, but they just yawned. 

So Elmer went to the dime store and bought four big rat traps. That did the trick. But Elmer's still mad at his cats.” 

  

During the 1940s, Taflinger continued teaching his large classes in figure drawing and portraits at his school, and he developed a relation as a visiting teacher and lecturer at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. 

Regarding his stint at DePauw, a clipping from what may be the student newspaper describes a lecture 

Taflinger gave entitled “Painful Acquisition of Knowledge without the Blessing of Academic Guidance.” The talk, which concerned the turning points of his art career between the rags and not so rich ages of 12 and 35, was subtitled in chapters with competitive titles; Episode One - Beautiful Teacher or Raggedy Man Reward,  second – Murat Shoebox or What Happened to the Landlady's Cat, third – The Falling Quarter or David Belasco's Perfect Memory... and so on, through six episodes.  

The scattered and haphazard talk was summed up by Taflinger himself, when he is quoted as saying his humorous lecture “lopped off the flamboyant fixtures to my conception of art.”  Whatever that is supposed to mean. 

Taf could not settle for one title for his turning  points, so he gave each one of them two. The dueling  nature of his dual titles, reveal a warring psyche in flux. On display, his thoughts battle their competing interests and betray a lack of focus, an inability to make a decision or stick with a single 'thing.' 

It seems an understanding Taflinger had of himself, as we shall soon see, this push and pull, this teeter totter of a life and career he lived.

Taflinger's frenetic multitasking was the subject of a detailed biographical sketch of Taflinger appearing in the December 28, 1947, Indianapolis Star. The article by Joseph K. Shepard titled, He Works at his Hobby and Plays at his Work – If He has the Time, begins with a question, “Wasted talent?”

It may be more a conclusion drawn by the writer upon the evidence he gathered through the course of his interview.  Shepard arrives for the interview at Taflinger's residence in the Golden Hills neighborhood of Indianapolis. Taflinger busied himself with various tasks, both tedious and menial, 'antiquing' of bricks for an addition to his home, feeding his many cats, tinkering with his ham radio gear. Meticulous in his procrastination from producing fine art, the bricks when he finished were a perfect match for the existing construction on his home, his cats remained fat and purring, and as an example of the fruits of his electronics bug, the writer relayed the following story,

“(Taf) recorded from the radio Shelbyville's complete basketball career in the state finals last season and sold eight sets of the records to Shelbyville basketball fanatics. It took 30 hours of continuous recording, 14 sides to each set, to complete the order.”

The state of disunion of Taflinger's art career is further addressed in the article,

“...Taf works harder at his hobby than he does at his natural gift.

That's why Taflinger masterpieces are hard to find. They are crumpled in waste-baskets, they are used as kitten bibs, napkins and tablecloths...

...Taflinger admits that he has done little serious work since the mural, Apotheosis of Science...10 years ago.”

Accompanying the article, which again relays Taf's biography a rollicking and vivid way, is a cartoon sketch of the teacher. The teacher Taflinger, as remembered by his student Mickey Thurgood.  With Delilah, a favorite cat, perched clawing to his back. Taf barking criticisms and getting sidetracked with his storytelling while his brushes wait.

Elmer Taflinger drawing by student Micky Thurgood
appearing in Indianapolis Star, 1947

Mark Diekhoff October 2025

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

Lucille Morehouse at the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette – Oct. 20 1922 to July 2, 2023

image of Lucille Morehouse at entrance of
Lucille Morehouse Exhibit, Art Museum of Greater Lafayette

Art Ghosts Stir in Irvington.

An exhibition at the Bona Thompson Memorial Center  in June of  2023 called The Irvington Group, 1928 – 1937, along with a detailed and informative article by Steven R. Barnett, then executive director of the Irvington Historical Society, would introduce me to the history of these fascinating founding artists, Irvington's original creative spirits. Accompanying the exhibit artworks was a binder packed with Xerox copies of a multitude of articles by an Indianapolis Star art critic of yesteryear. Only later would I understand the herculean efforts of this trailblazing lady, the depth of her impressions, her dedication over many decades. The output of her coverage, the physical heft of the over-stuffed binder, amazed me. And she, like William Forsyth, had lived in Irvington for many years.

Her writings and the exhibition opened me to a yet another new and undiscovered world, like my own art journey thirty years prior, the art journey of Indiana's artists who came before.  Captured with detail and nuance, through astute observation, and with an often poetic and  signature storytelling approach,  this writer, the first great art critic in Indiana, left a posterity memorialized for us all today. So enamored with her, after seeing her collected columns at the show, I searched the web for more.

Then on the first day of July 2023, I  stumbled upon, coincidentally, a relevant  exhibition, soon ending, in fact in a day, at the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette. 

A show called simply Lucille Morehouse. 

Installation View Lucille Morehouse
at Art Museum of Greater Lafayette

The World of Lucille Morehouse.

At the exhibitions entrance was a short biography of her life which appeared in The Indianapolis Star, her employer for many decades in the first half of the century, as told by her obituary on February 19, 1961. 

Born in Tippecanoe County, she graduated from Purdue University and became a school teacher. She taught in Kokomo first, an then in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

Other newspaper sources reveal that her love of writing preceded and coincided with her employment as a teacher,  as she was editor for the Purdue student paper, The Exponent, during her college days, and also edited society pages for several newspapers; in Lafayette upon graduation, later in Milwaukee and eventually Indianapolis. 

Shortly after the groundbreaking Armory Show in New York in the spring of 1913 that would introduce the nation to 'modern' art, Lucille Morehouse first appears as an art observer, in print, in the pages of The Indianapolis Star.  Work under her byline would appear in columns of various names over the years in The Star, including, Arts and Artists, In the World of Art and simply Art. 

She established a column with such staying power that the font of its banner began in an elaborate Edwardian Nouveau and eventually settled into a crisp and neat Deco style as the fashion of times and graphic arts evolved.

The poet and critic of modern art at the moment of its genesis in Paris, Guillaume Apollinaire, good friend to Pablo Picasso and associate of many other French artists of the time, wrote many essays on art and artists under the banner The Art World between 1910 and 1913. It reminds us that an art world can be macro and micro, and at the same time. Apollinaire was one among many writers upon whose words our understanding of European art at the turn of the 20th Century is based. Lucille Morehouse was more a singular figure in shaping our understanding of the art world of Indiana. If not for her impulse to see, her compulsion to write, her eagerness to understand, our understanding and awareness of our local art heritage would not be what it is today. And the relation between the French and European trends in art, and the effect on Indiana half a world away, is startling. Indeed, Morehouse's first words on art in The Indianapolis Star (covered elsewhere in this blog) memorialize,  in a humorous way, her reaction to the newfangled thoughts  an out-of-town practitioner of post-impressionism, the East Coast visiting artist, William Emile Schumacher.

From 1913 until shortly before 1950, her comprehensive columns would catalog, in an encyclopedic way,  Indiana's local and visiting artists, its galleries and exhibitions, its institutions and patrons – its gossip even, and goings-on – as nothing, or seemingly very little, as it relates to Indiana art, escaped her unblinking eye.

Already in her middle age by the time of her art writing career, her obituary describes her as demure little lady who was often seen in the galleries and among the artworks she loved.  Dressed always in her recognizable flat hat, and wearing overshoes, carrying an umbrella regardless of weather, hauling a large carpet bag stuffed with her pencils and writing pads. She never fancied the typewriter, so her columns were written longhand on pads, often in newspaper office in the late night and wee hours to meet her deadline.

She lived simply in her Irvington cottage on Beechwood Avenue, an abode that might have lacked furniture and ordinary creature comforts, but was stacked and piled with an accumulation of artworks, many gifted from the artists themselves. A chosen few pictures were anointed the honor of a placement on the wall, most noteworthy, a small nude by Elmer Taflinger. 

She would never exhibit her collection during her life.

In her last decade, Lucille Morehouse became invalid, and lived out her final years in a private nursing home on Central Avenue. 

The lady, Indiana's first great art columnist, although having died, bestowed a living spirit that endures to this day. Bequeathed to all Indiana lovers of art and history and writing. Her gift to us, her life's work, was the subject of the Lafayette exhibition.

Back Where She Started, Tippecanoe County, Indiana.

The Lucille Morehouse exhibit was presented in a medium-sized gallery room of the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette in Lafayette, Indiana. Also on display at the time of my visit was a contemporary regional show of colorful and varied artworks in a large main display area and a solo room of largish decorative paintings by Cindy Wingo in a show called It's Not All Black and White.

At the entrance to Lucille Morehouse was the curator's statement as follows,

“For this exhibition, thirty-two paintings from the Permanent Collection are paired with articles by Lucille. Some essays speak of specific artworks in the collection, while others refer more generally to the artist and their work.  Lucille's words provide a treasure trove of insight into the work and thinking during the times they were created.” 

Through her eyes, amid her thoughts...her words.

French Village at Night, George Ames Aldrich
in Art Museum of Greater Lafayette

The exhibit contained French Village at Night by George Ames Aldrich. A March 27, 1932 column by Lucille Morehouse discusses a Lieber Gallery showing of Aldrich paintings,   

“Mr. Aldrich has studied widely, under eminent masters, both in this country and in Europe. He is represented in many museums and galleries as well as in private collections over the country. The present exhibit includes paintings made in France and in Maine, Massachusetts and Indiana. Some of his finest accomplishments are the big canvases that picture winter streams, with snowy tree-lined banks.

He is especially happy in getting realistic effects of sunlit snow – although these are scarcely less beautiful than his representation of shadowed snow. As an example, his beautiful Winter Night – Quimperie, with church dominating in the composition, might be cited.”

In a May 20, 1928 column, Morehouse introduces Kokomo artist, Geraldine Armstrong Scott, with a mischievous story based on the critic's observations of the 3rd Annual Hoosier Salon exhibit, then held at Marshall Field in Chicago,

“Visitors...will recall a portrait by Simon P. Baus, life-size, three-quarters length and in standing pose of a slender, dark-eyed woman in a striking black costume whose distinctive headdress at once caught the eye....Viewers of paintings in the Marshall Field galleries soon marked the presence of a tall young woman who frequently wore a black costume identically like the one in the Baus painting. It was not long until it became generally known that the Geraldine of the portrait was in reality Mrs. Geraldine Armstrong Scott of Kokomo, herself an exhibitor.”

Mrs. Scott is represented in the Morehouse exhibit with the collection's 1928 canvas Autumn Scene.  

Landscape scenes of changing colors have become a common theme for the young artist as noted by Morehouse in discussing Mrs. Scott's works; Glorious Autumn in the Hoosier Salon and Autumn Shadows displayed at both Robertson Galleries in South Bend and finally Pettis Gallery in Indianapolis at the time of the article.  

In her December 27, 1931 article on a solo show by George H. Baker at the Women's Department Club in Indianapolis, Morehouse describes the artist as “one of the most forceful of the landscape painters in the Richmond group of artists.” She further observes his landscape style is characterized by his vigorous brushwork and ability to infuse mood into the realism of his pictures.

A tranquil and bright spring lakeside landscape from the the museum's collection, Untitled by Dale Bessire, hangs with Lucille Morehouse's description of the Brown County Art Colony artist's solo show at H. Lieber in Indianapolis in December 1944. Speaking of a different picture of a similar mood, Spring Comes, Morehouse writes, perhaps quoting the artist,

“Mr. Bessire has put upon canvas a rarely beautiful interpretation of that fleeting period of the early season when the soft green of opening buds has a pearly quality.”

Orrin Draven in Lucille Morehouse exhibit
Art Museum of Greater Lafayette

A remarkable painting by Nebraska native and Richmond resident, self-taught painter Orrin Draver, depicts what I can only guess is a landscape with stream capturing an early season snow, as the white-covered ground is surrounded by the dazzling fall colors of bushes and trees still full of leaves that range in color from yellow-green to brick red. The painting also depicts a bright blue, nearly cloudless, winter sky, which glows above and is reflected in the tranquil water of the foreground. The accompanying Morehouse column does not mention this unusual picture, but does note the artist often painted landscape scenes with water as in Still Water and Mirrored Pool, both on display at an H. Lieber show in July 1944. Of Still Water she says, and it would also be true of the collection's picture, 

“The picture is restful to look upon when the mercury soars, and it would be quite as satisfying during the zero days of mid-winter.”  

In her March 8, 1931 column accompanying  the smallish pastel,  Portrait of Richard B. Gruelle (1910), by Glenn Cooper Henshaw, Lucille Morehouse provides historical information about the training and early days of the artist,  

“...Glenn Cooper Henshaw was born in Tipton County, Indiana...he began his art training with a few month's study in the Herron art school when J. Ottis Adams was at the head... he studies for one year in Munich and later in Paris at both the Beaux Arts and the Julian academy. There were portrait commissions in London for one summer and a winter following the study in Paris, and while a student in Munich sketches of foreign scenes were sent home.” 

She also writes about Henshaw's recent portrait-painting “vacation” in Indiana, a homecoming period of sorts, between time at his long-established New York studio and an impending visit to California in anticipation of the establishment of an additional studio on the West Coast. She writes that the artist came back to Indiana,

“... (to) paint portraits of old friends, to study the character of new friends in terms of line and color, and to bring baby faces out from the white paper, their soft cheeks rounding like a delicate pink rose, their eyes full of wonder at the big new world...”

 As a side note, there is a permanent room dedicated to the art of Glenn Cooper Henshaw at the Brown County Art Gallery in Nashville, Indiana. The works there include many portraits similar to those described in Morehouse's column, including a full length society portrait and smaller, more casually executed, paintings of children. A very large night scene in oil of a large cityscape also hangs in the room, a magnus opus in the style of the smaller pastel work for which Henshaw is most known today (an most appearing at auction).

It is not certain that Morehouse's remarks regarding a Henshaw pastel Portrait of Richard Gruell mentioned in her column is one in the same as the work in the exhibit. She says about a portrait in her 1931 column,

“ It is also of local interest to know that a pastel portrait that was awarded honorable mention in the exhibition of the New York Water Color Society, and was later reproduced in art publications, represented Richard Gruelle, one of the five Indianapolis artists who constituted the first 'Hoosier group' of artists.

Mr. Henshaw still owns that early portrait of Mr. Gruelle, posed with his palette and brush and canvas, and it is now on view, along with many other examples of work, both early and recent, at the family home of the late Dr. A. W. Brayton...”

The collection's pastel contains Mr. Gruelle's likeness and his palette and brushes, but no canvas. There could be any number of reasons for the discrepancy between the critic's description and the collection's actual picture;  a mistaken description, or memory by the critic if the works are indeed one in the same, or the collection's piece could be a related study, or alternative pose of the pastel referenced by Morehouse. 

The painter Edmund Brucker, perhaps most known today for his portraits and industrial scenes in the social realist style, also painted landscapes that appear inspired by realism and post-impressionism. One such picture, View of Nashville, is mentioned by Lucille Morehouse in her March 2, 1941 column and is exhibited in Lucille Morehouse show of works from the museum's collection.

Morehouse writes of the artistic treatment of surface textures in a November 18, 1951 article,

“Half the battle is won when a painter of still life works skillfully with surface textures. The artist may use all the color on his palette to paint the still life, but if velvet does not have the 'feel' of velvet,  and metal does not have the 'feel' of metal, and wood the 'feel' of wood – and so on – then the still life painting is only partly finished. William F. Kaeser is a skillful painter of surface textures. No Hoosier artist – nor any other, it is my firm belief – can excel him.”

 The collection's Kaeser still life of three contrasting house plants on a hexagonal wooden table illustrate the critic's observations about the artist's surface textures. The waxy, chalky and fuzzy leafs of the distinct plants are expertly rendered in oil paint, as well as the polished sheen of the tabletop.

Kaethe Kollwitz, Folge Tod
Art Museum of Greater Lafayette

The international artist Kaethe Kollwitz is represented in the show by the unsettling charcoal drawing of a mother and child, accosted by a terrifying figure: Folge Tod.  The title is roughly translated as “Death Follows.” In the adjacent column by Lucille Morehouse, her observations of a November 1946 exhibition of the artist at Herron Art Museum, where she writes about the artist's life and influences. 

Kollwitz lost a son in the First World War, and her attention was turned to themes of poverty, degeneracy and suffering. Morehouse writes about works in the Herron show by the artist of a similar type to the collection's drawing, noting works called  Death Recognized as Friend and Death Seizes the Children,  

“The mother-and-child theme, handled in an entirely different way than the subject is usually pictured in church art, afforded the artist an opportunity for interpretation of deep feeling among (the) destitute and suffering.”

Many other works were included in the show, including canvases by  Brown County Art Colony artists Carl Graf and Will Vawter.  

Additional Irvington Artists, besides William Kaeser, included Frederick Polley, Clifton Wheeler  and Charles G. Yeager are also exhibited. Yeager's modernist landscape watercolor is very similar to, and perhaps from the same series as a work shown in the accompanying Morehouse column from February 4, 1940, called Lakes on Mountain Side. 

Finally, Indianapolis area artists such as Gordon Mess, Elmer Taflinger and  Florence Bartley Smithburn have pictures in the show. Bartley Smithburn's picture, Meal Preparation, is an exotic figurative landscape inspired by her world travels. Taflinger is represented by a stunningly vulnerable portrait of a female nude. The woman seems almost frightened, clutching a thin red cover in her hands at her lap, that drapes to the floor between her legs. 

Nakedness of Thought.

That Lucille Morehouse displayed a Taflinger nude in her home in a place of honor speaks perhaps to her recognition of the nakedness of thought she herself possessed and shared for all those years. The critic's stand, like the artists', in black and white, and all the colors. The courage of a bare statement for all the art world to see.

Mark Diekhoff, September 2025

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.