By Kathleen McLaughlin, The IBJ
kmclaughlin@ibj.com
Ten of Indiana native George Rickey's towering kinetic sculptures are coming to downtown Indianapolis in May.
The downtown exhibit will overlap this summer with a career survey of the influential artist's work, hosted by the Indianapolis Art Center in Broad Ripple. Then pieces from both shows will travel to South Bend, where Rickey was born in 1907.
The combined exhibits are an unprecedented opportunity to absorb Rickey's renowned large-scale pieces, plus rare early work. "It's a project that is more of a museum scale," said David Kwasigroh, exhibits director at the Indianapolis Art Center.
IBJ reported late last fall that the Arts Council of Indianapolis was working with Rickey's estate on a public art exhibit that would be the last in a series to be funded by the city's Cultural Development Commission.
Under former Mayor Bart Peterson, the commission used city funds and major grants from the Lilly Endowment to bring in high-profile, internationally known public artists, beginning with Tom Otterness in 2005.
Costing $250,000, "George Rickey: An Evolution" will be on display from May 5 through Sept. 7, the arts council announced today. Exact locations are to be announced later.
The Art Center's show in Broad Ripple, "A Life in Art: Works by George Rickey," will run June 26 through Aug. 23.
"We're hoping that the enthusiasm for the sculptures downtown will drive people to come here and see the exhibition," Kwasigroh said. "Hopefully a lot of new people will discover the arts center."
In June, the Art Center will be celebrating its 75th anniversary and bidding farewell to director Joyce Sommers.
In addition to five of Rickey's medium-size outdoor sculptures, the center will have in its gallery early portraiture and still life, WPA mural studies, small sculptures and models of more renowned pieces.
Rickey lived to be 95, and in his later years took up pastels, the same medium with which he began his career, Kwasigroh said. "He was in the nursing home at the end of his life. They brought him flowers every day, and that was his subject matter. He made sure to do at least one sketch every day."
Kwasigroh said Rickey's influence shows up in the work of artists like Greg Hull of Indianapolis, who suspended a series of inhaling-and-exhaling red balloons from the ceiling of the new parking garage at Indianapolis International Airport.
Rickey's son Philip, who lives in St. Paul, Minn., said the Indianapolis exhibit requests came in as he was planning a major exhibit for South Bend. Rickey's estate is giving his personal papers to the Notre Dame University Archives, as well as a visual archive to the Snite Museum of Art on the school's campus.
Philip Rickey said his father's relationship with Notre Dame goes back to a successful exhibit in 1985. "The university continued to cultivate that relationship and purchased a couple of sculptures," he said.
With the three upcoming shows, he said, "you see a full trajectory of my father's career."