museums

Julianne Swartz uses photography, plus magnets and other everyday items, in her installations. The lenses in different pieces of work help transfer these mundane objects into “magical moving pictures.”

Says the artist, “If my pictures have a message, it’s an organic message. It’s not like I set out to improve rights for LGBT people.”

Jim Wilke, a former rider in the International Gay Rodeos, is featured in the exhibit, and spoke at the museum about openly gay life in the American West.

Narrated by actor Christopher Plummer, the film features saber-toothed tigers, mastodons, and wooly mammoths, recreated by hit-or-miss CGI in their original habitats of beautifully depicted Utah and South Dakota, as they would have looked during the final days of the last of five Ice Ages our world has experienced.

Finding a complete set of hyoid, or throat bones, is a huge find. These belong to Fred, a mastodon discovered in Fort Wayne (and pictured here).

Our expert pulls up a chair and assesses a new furniture exhibit.

“What didn’t happen is enough people showing up to populate the structure we had built,” Venable says. But “Art is not for everybody,” says one IMA critic. “Art is for anybody, which is very different.”