If students in Indiana’s largest school district need some artistic inspiration, they can just take a look around.
The Indianapolis Star reports that donated paintings by T.C. Steele, William Forsyth and other members of the Hoosier Group of impressionist painters hang with little fanfare at public schools in the city.
Indianapolis Public Schools house paintings and artwork from many Indiana artists, and the district’s collection has been estimated to be worth $4 million. The report did not say who evaluated the works of art.
Schools might not be the safest place for such valuable paintings and at least a few have needed to be repaired due to pencil stabbings, the report said.
Richard Myers, who oversees the safety of the collection, once walked into a school to find students sitting within inches of the district’s most valuable piece, a 6-foot by 8-foot painting by Otto Stark.
“The teacher didn’t know what it was, but they could just reach over with their hand and touch it,” he said. “It was just a scary thing.”
Under the terms of the donations, most of the paintings must remain at the schools to which they were originally given, IPS officials say. The board is not considering selling any of the artwork, the newspaper reported.
Security devices are attached to all the paintings, and the school buildings have alarms. Some paintings are on permanent loan to the Indiana State Museum, and others have been displayed in the Statehouse.
The school collection ranks among the world’s best collections of work by the Hoosier Group and Brown County Art Colony, said Harriet Warkel, curator of pre-1945 American art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
“It’s a representative example of what the Hoosier artists can do,” Warkel said. “It’s as good as anybody’s collection.”
Jason Dorsey, an artist who also is an IPS parent, said the paintings enhance the children’s education.
“To have cultural works, all of those things add to the learning environment,” he said.
At one school last week, an art teacher took students on a walking tour of the halls to see works by Stark and Clifton Wheeler, including large murals of pastoral scenes.
“The art’s real good,” said 9-year-old Anthony Mapps. “It looks like the real world. The people who made this are very good artists.”
The newspaper agreed not to identify the specific locations of any works as a security precaution.
Information from: The Indianapolis Star, http://www.indystar.com
© 2009 Associated Press. Displayed by permission. All rights reserved.
