BOLD: New Voices in Contemporary Art at Newfields

Re-Remembering V (Something Torn and New), by Wangari Mathenge

In an exhibit continuing through June 28, 2026, the  Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) at Newfields presents thirteen works in the collection of the IMA. As described by the museum, the works "highlight (its) ever expanding and globally relevant contemporary art collection." 

Several are recent acquisitions of works by "cutting-edge contemporary" African artists. Those works, along with some works already in the museum's collection, make up nine of the thirteen that are shown for the first time in an exhibit by the IMA.

All the works represent  the IMA's "evolving contemporary collection and its commitment toward a global, inclusive, relevant future."

The show, BOLD: New Voices in Contemporary Art, includes a single work each of the included artists. The new acquisitions include works by African artists such as Wole Lagunju, Turiya Magadlela and Kimathi Mafafo.  Museum favorite artworks previously on display in the collection are also included, such as those by Vaughn Spann, Carlos Rolón and Samuel Levi Jones. 

The word bold describes not only the artworks, their ambitious scale in many cases, and the underlying artistic statement in others, but also the exhibition space itself and the innovative selection of works and color of the walls. 

Re-Remembering V (Something Torn and New), (top of page) a large oil on canvas by Kenyan artist Wangari Mathenge, presents an amazing and realistic portrait of a woman, perhaps standing, perhaps lying down. Her right arm raised and bent with the point of the elbow highest. The pose subtly hints at classic female portraits with hand behind head. 

The picture is an avalanche of color, pattern, object and shape, with a few carefully placed words, most noticeably, 'Hope'. 

Textiles and clothing, in a haphazard jumble, vie for the viewers attention with plaids, checks, stripes and organic and floral patterns. Books, toys, consumer items, produce such as an eggplant and lemons, and photos are scattered about completing a busy mishmash of elements that delight the eye. 

The title refers to a book, carefully painted near the woman's left hip amid the mountain of other objects; a bright orange rectangle of color near a round orange of the same hue and bottle of Coke. 

The detailed care of the painting's items makes the book's title clear, and thus the importance of its inclusion. 

Something Torn and New by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, subtitled An African Renaissance.  According to the accompanying exhibit notes, in the book the author “presents his concept of 'Europhonism,' or the replacement of native African names, languages and identities with European ones.”

With that in mind, looking at and experiencing Mathenge's remarkable picture, one can see the painter's woman as perhaps overwhelmed with the collision of Western and African traditions and socioeconomic systems both trying to survive, even triumph, at the same time in the same place. She does not look happy, or particularly sad. Perhaps reticent or wary, but like the word on the yellow banner near her upraised arm, possessing hope.

The Adoration of Benjamin, 2023, by Wole Langunju, a Nigerian artist, shows a current British celebrity and musician in a monumental portrait. The work, also an oil on canvas, is boldly pattered and colorful, not unlike Mathenge's Re-Remembering. 

According to the gallery notes, the artist is using the patterns and colors of a specific African tradition as a basis for his design. The wrapping of the subject, Benjamin, and his background space, in the colors and the patterns of Africa, as opposed to the posh, Western clothing or environs he is usually seen in, seems a repatriation in a way, by Langunju, of Benjamin. If not the man himself, his stylish beauty, his success, perhaps his charismatic power –  attributes of the painting, as well as the sitter.  

The Adoration of Benjamin by Wole Langunju

Or the painting could be something more akin to fan-fiction, in this case fan-art. Wherein the artist incorporates their favorites into the style of their overall work, such as Andy Warhol did with his many celebrity portraits, in the overall vein of his signature look.

Sisters in Unison I, 2024, by South African artist Kimathi Mafate, is a large hand- and machine-stitched embroidery on fabric piece in shades of rose, flesh, black and white. 

The piece is lush and extravagant in a decorative manner reminiscent of Gustav Klimt, yet here, so pretty in pink, all the artist's own. 

Two reclined women, intimately close, are stretched out in parallel poses, and look out with sideways glances at the viewer.

 

Sisters in Unison I by Kimathi Mafate

There is a splendor and perfume to the opulent scene. The power of the gaze of the women is balanced by the soft billowing curves of the fabric which surrounds them, the overall soft and feminine color scheme, and the many flower blossoms that almost appear summoned by the gesture of their hands.

In addition to many additional large and engaging two-dimensional pieces, a large sculptural vessel in painted fiberglass, Ndebele Abstract, 2023, by Esther Mahlangu. The Ndebele tradition is described by the exhibition notes as “an art form celebrated for its bold geometric patterns, vibrant colors, and intricate symmetry .”  All those attributes are contained in Mahlangu's vessel, creating a stunning overall effect. 

Ndebele Abstract by Esther Mahlangu

In a way, bold, vibrant, colorful and patterned are components seen in some part in most every work in the show.  From the dazzling, fluid video work, Rabbit Hole, 2011, by Jacco Olivier to the massive show-stopper Rover, 2021, by Vaughn Spann, whose assemblage, which due to the gargantuan size, is experienced as more an installation that a multi-media painting. As show-stoppers usually are,  it is big and bold.   

Mark Diekhoff, February 2026

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.

50 Years of Robert Indiana's LOVE at Indianapolis Museum of Art

Mike, Mark and Eddie w/ LOVE by Robert Indiana at IMA, 1971

Art at First Sight?

Love can be lasting or fleeting, casual or serious. It can be selfless or controlling, narcissistic or empathetic. The affection of Indianapolis, or at least the Indianapolis Museum of Art, for the work of Robert Indiana could be described as obsessive and possessive, at least when it comes to a certain 9000 pound masterpiece of a sculpture by the artist.  

The year 2025 marked the official 50-year anniversary of the permanent acquisition of LOVE, a massive outdoor public art piece of oxidized steel, measuring 12 feet high and wide.  It was purchased by friends of the museum for the museum for a reported $75,000 in 1975. 

If 1975 was indeed the marriage year, then the IMA and LOVE had been shacked-up during a long engagement. LOVE first came to town in 1970 for the opening exhibit of the Indianapolis Museum of Art and its new Krannert Pavilion on 38th Street.

It was a match made in heaven, desire at first sight. A love born, perhaps, more of mirroring than opposites attracting, given the artist's adopted name. For a Hoosier to love Indiana is not so much of a stretch. 

Whatever the source, Robert Indiana's LOVE would infatuate not only our city and state, but the entire country, and the world beyond. As demonstrated with the Beatles' All You Need Is... song from 1967 and the Summer of, yes, Love, the world seemed eager for a mass hysteria hit off a certain four letter word.  And although the day-glo of psychedelia was dimming just those few summers later, the geo-political globe was still afire with assassination, riot, war and poverty. The Beatles, the bed-ins and the Sunshine Supermen had not yet dug us out of that hole.

Folks hadn't given up, though, and still seemed eager in the '70s, that self-help decade, to aspire to the strongest of positive emotions that love obviously is.  

Despite the pits we lived in, we yearned and hoped and dreamed of it still. The most hopeful and universal and eternal human emotion that there is when all is said and done.

As William Burroughs wrote in his journal just a day before he died in 1997,

“Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is. LOVE.”

Burroughs capitalized all the letters of the word in his journal, like Robert Indiana did in his sculpture almost thirty years earlier. Thus emphasized, the word was made a symbol or a sign, art or not, an eventual epitaph with its lopsided 'O' to be scorned or adored. 

The 1970s would bring stagflation and downsizing, lay-offs and unemployment lines. Many were left yearning for better times while stuck in long gas lines in hulking gas guzzlers already extinct.

Robert Indiana had caught a bottle of lightning and was ready to ride that zeitgeist, with just a vibe and his signs, to his own promised word.  A word most potent, with a power that never grows tired plodding through the tin pan alleys of Madison Avenue, and out onto an endless and thundering road. Robert Indiana was on the human highway that everybody wants. Paved with money and a thing called LOVE.

Love in Two and Three Dimensions.

Robert Indiana created a two-dimensional prototype of sorts, for the later, greater sculpture of the same name with his LOVE painting created in 1966. By 1967, the Herron Museum of Art had acquired the painting for their permanent collection. The Herron Museum evolved into the Indianapolis Museum of Art in the following years, and the painting is now at IMA/Newfields. 

It is a large 6 foot square work with that word in red letters and green to the lower left fill, blue in the upper and right fill. The enclosed hollow of the tilted 'O' is filled with green. 

In a Sunday Star Magazine article by Gretchen Wolfram in the September 8, 1968, Indianapolis Star, Robert Indiana called his style of painting 'hard-edged' as opposed to pop. 

One can judge for oneself. The painting is on current display in the contemporary galleries at Newfields. 

Looking at it now, with the passage of time, Indiana's imagery has obtained a ubiquitous familiarity as common as a Warhol soup can. The hard-edged distinction has lost its edge as a cliche in art world circles, and so pop the painting is today, at least for me. 

The sculpture, though, is another thing altogether.  

Lacking the comic book colors, made of Cor-ten steel, massive, imposing with a gorgeous brown patina, it transcends the various art movements in motion at the time of its creation. Not quite Neo-Dada with its simplistic clarity. Not quite minimal in the brashness of its snap and crackle. Yet not quite pop in the abstracted meaning of the sentimental romanticism of its most obvious message. 

LOVE has obtained a gravitas that far exceeds even the heyday of its overnight sensation. It still boxes above its own heavyweight class of fellow contenders like Donald Judd and Richard Serra. 

From the foot of its 'VE,' looking up-close and personal, it possesses an eternal solemnity that speaks volumes, not just one four-letter word. 

Pre Nup and Post Nup – 1970 through Today.

LOVE was first seen in Indianapolis in 1970. Indeed its first public exhibition anywhere occurred here at the inaugural exhibit for the Indianapolis Museum of Art, at its then brand-new Krannert Pavilion, on 38th Street. 

The museum was built on the grounds of the former Oldfields estate built by Hugh McKennan Landon circa 1913 atop former farm fields, and later sold to Josiah K. Lilly Jr. of Lilly Pharmaceutical and the Lilly Endowment, in 1932. 

The Robert Indiana sculpture was just one of seven outdoor public sculptures on display on the museum grounds for the occasion. The exhibition called Seven Outside ran from October 1970 through January 1971. Other artists included Alexander Calder, George Rickey and David Smith. But Indiana's was the breakout work. And, as it would turn out, the most enduring.

LOVE made a big splash. High school kids and museum staff, alike, climbed all over it as it sat on the lawn like a piece of playground equipment. Everybody seemed to want a piece of Indiana's LOVE. He was claimed, by both Tech High School and another one in Mooresville, as one of their own. 

Robert Indiana did admit to a nomadic youth moving across the state. Quoting the Star Magazine article mentioned above,

“(Robert Indiana) claims New Castle as his birthplace and he lived in at least 21 other Indiana towns, Mooresville among them, by the time he was 17...

...he stuck around Indianapolis long enough to be graduated second in the Class of '46 from Arsenal Technical High School, where his main interests centered around art, Latin and journalism.

...he was photography editor of the ...yearbook and considered a career in photography. Also, he won a scholarship to attend the Saturday classes at Herron.”

Indiana discussed the origins of LOVE in an October 21, 1970, Indianapolis News article and interview with Peggy Jackson. He discusses how his first artworks were found object assemblages, a style and technique practiced by a large number of artists in the the mid-to-late 1950s. He 'found' some 19th century stencils, which were a basis of the painting, and later sculpture, LOVE. 

About the Indianapolis Museum of Art adoption of his imagery as their quasi trademark or logo at the time, Indiana said, quietly to Jackson,

“Yes, I'm happy that the museum is using LOVE as their symbol... People care about love. I don't think many people care about art...”

So proud of the sculpture, was the IMA, that in May 1971, it was relocated from its Seven Outside location, to the center of a circular lawn at the entrance to the museum. The Indianapolis Star, on May 16, 1971, explained,

“Museum officials believe that the sculpture will provide a proper mood for delegates planning to attend sessions at the International Conference of Cities in the museum later this month. 

The sculpture, on indefinite loan from the...artist, will be moved back to its regular spot on the grounds after the conference.”

By the autumn, the sculpture would travel out East to spend time first installed at Boston's City Hall Plaza, and then in New York City in Central Park from November 1971 through January 1972. 

Fanfare ensued, and the New York Times reported that “No one had an unkind word to say for LOVE.” and that the sculptures placement in the city marked “a great day for New York.”

LOVE by Robert Indiana at Indiana National Bank plaza, 1972

Upon its return to Indianapolis in February, 1972, LOVE would be placed at the downtown Indiana National Bank plaza, and unveiled on Valentine's Day. It would return to IMA after about 6 weeks. A concurrent exhibit of Indiana's work occurred in the bank's lobby during the period.

In a detailed front page Indianapolis News column on February 14, 1972, writer Marion Simon Garmel spoke to Indiana about his LOVE just installed and unveiled at INB. About it's permanent location in Indianapolis, he said,

“I would love to see it in my home town, which is New York City now."

But also,  

"...I would like to see it on top of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on a revolving pedestal. That would put Indiana back on the map.”

Garmel records that the remark was said “only half in jest.” 

She also records his comments about his ties to the state, affection for its traditions and its inspiration on his work,

“Born Robert Clark...in New Castle, he lived in 21 Indiana towns before he was 17, shuttling back and forth between divorced parents.”

And also,

“He collects James Whitcomb Riley memorabilia...and refers to Vinalhaven, the island off the coast of Maine where he maintains a summer studio, as 'My little Brown County.' ”

Garmel writes that Indiana's work is rooted in memories of growing up in Indiana, citing a specific example,

“The colors in his original LOVE painting...are drawn from his memory of standing on East 38th Street and watching a red-and-green Phillips 66 service-station sign flash against the blue sky.”

Garmel quotes the artist's description of his motivations in creating his work,

“I have a passion for documentation...I'm really documenting the times. I think that's what my signs are all about. I'm celebrating American places and American ideals and, who knows, next I might celebrate American people. But I don't know what form that will take.”

LOVE's reputation only continued to grow, and a momentum continued to build, in the following months and years. 

The December 13, 1972, Indianapolis News reports on a New York City show, Robert Indiana: Celebration of a Decade, that contained many new iterations of Indiana's LOVE theme. The show was reviewed by critic John Canaday in the New York Times, as quoted in a Marion Garmel Brush Strokes column in the Indianapolis News on December 13, 1972,

“It is simply not fair that these variations (of Indiana's LOVE) – hardly variations, more like repetitions – should make such a sparkling show...”

On January 26, 1973, the US Postal Service issued a first class stamp of Indiana's LOVE design just in time for Valentine's Day. 

Promoted as “a special stamp for someone special,” by the post office, it was an overwhelming success, with over 300 million 8-cent stamps issued. The success also inspired the the 'love' themed stamps issued annually by the post office almost every year since 1982.

The IMA and the state's infatuation affair with Robert Indiana would continue over the following decades. IMA mounted exhibitions that included Indiana such as Painting and Sculpture Today 1974, and the solo shows Robert Indiana, 1978 and Essential Robert Indiana, 2014, among many others.

 The IMA would acquire the monumental sculpture series NUMBERS (0 through 9), 1980-83, in 1988. 

Numbers (5) and Numbers (0) by Robert Indiana
installed at IMA entrance at Newfields to honor 
anniversary of Indiana's LOVE by the museum 

Indiana Obelisk was commissioned for the entrance of the new Indiana State Museum building by then Governor Frank O'Bannon in 2000, and was unveiled on April 9, 2008.

Time Passages of Love and Art.

LOVE has been restored in recent years after many years displayed out-of-doors. It rests inside out of the rain and the cold, but out of the sunshine too. People, kids and adults alike, aren't crawling all over it anymore. That dance is done. 

Maybe the museum should order a replica to be placed outside as was intended for the original. And allow that interaction on the grass beneath the sky. Like Florence, Italy did with its David. The precious one inside, like a hermit sealed in the protection of a retirement home. But outside, in Florence, David has two clones, like twins that are out and about with the crowds and the fountains and the birds.

LOVE, Robert Indiana, 1970 outside at IMA, postcard image

I started my research into LOVE, the sculpture, after I came upon a Kodachrome slide in my father's old things a few years ago (image top of page). My brother and me, and our same best friend. 

The Summer of 1971, at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Three boys, a sculpture and the Krannert Pavilion. 

All our backs were to LOVE in the snapshot. Indeed, I don't really remember seeing the sculpture at all at the time. Robert Indiana was way over my head. This was my first visit to an art museum.

Dad had taken us boys along as he wanted to see the Russells and the Remingtons on display. That was his recollection, anyway, when I asked him about that day he took us to the museum. 

All I really remember about the art museum from that day, is the stairways we climbed, and upon reaching a landing, a series of vibrant Op Art paintings that played hippie-colored tricks on my eyes. Orange and flashing, bending tricks.

But LOVE wasn't through with me yet, even if I blocked it from my memory or just didn't notice the first time. 

By a couple years later, at the Block's Department Store at Southern Plaza, I saw the shiny chrome of a simple four letter word, its gleam and dance of light bending across its curving edges. 

It was the size of a door-stop, and it cost 8 bucks. This was before I had a job or even my paper route, so that was a lot of money.

A 50-something-year-old Mother's Day present still sits in a place of honor aside engagement and wedding photos, baby pictures, and other treasured gifts. It's not beat up too bad at all. It still shines. 

Mark Diekhoff, Valentine's Day, 2026

See also - Robert Indiana Interview, 1978

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.