Beaming with pride

This Friday, the cold tower sitting in the front lawn of the IU Art Museum will transform into a glowing 70-foot beacon for the arts.\nThe Light Totem was constructed to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the dedication of the IU Art Museum and will be unveiled at a ceremony Friday. The tower is the result of years of planning by the museum, which wanted to find the perfect way to commemorate the building’s silver anniversary.\nThe art museum has become one of the most distinctive structures on campus since its dedication 25 years ago, and museum officials wanted \nsomething that would reflect its unique style. To this end, they traveled to the office of the museum’s mastermind, architect I.M. Pei, whose work includes the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and the 70-story Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong.\nLinda Baden, associate director of editorial services for the museum, visited Pei’s New York offices two years ago to discuss the building’s silver anniversary with Theodore Musho, the architect who implemented Pei’s design. The building is composed of three triangles, two larger triangles on the east and west sides joined by a 110-foot glass atrium, which is an equilateral triangle. Baden expressed concern that the front entrance never drew people in off Seventh Street, as it was intended to do.\n“(Musho) said, ‘Why don’t you think about creating something from that, make some art that does draw attention to the entryway and brings it to life?’” Baden said.\nIU Art Museum Director Adelheid Gealt and Baden approached Robert Shakespeare, a professor of lighting and stage design in the IU Department of Theatre and Drama, to design something based on Musho’s advice. He came up with the light totem, which is funded by a $50,000 IU New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities grant, as well as private donations. \nThe tower’s high-powered, energy-efficient LED lights will illuminate the south wall of the building with a sea of colors all night, every night. The lights are so powerful they can burn continuously for almost eight years. \n“We can paint color up and down the structure any way we like,” Shakespeare said. “What will be on this building is something that can be extraordinarily dynamic, like lightning, or can be extraordinary passive, like the melting of a glacier.”\nIt is designed to attract attention to the museum with its height and light, but also to reflect the museum’s distinct design. The structure is exactly the same height as the south wall opposite it. A spotlight projecting vertically from the top intersects with two spotlights placed on the side of the museum, to form a triangle of light on top of the museum.\n“The idea when you are doing anything is it needs to resonate, it needs to be part of the original, but it also needs to be different,” Shakespeare said.\nThe celebration will also include a lecture by Bruce Cole, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Before being appointed to that postition he was a distinguished professor of art history and a professor of comparative literature at IU. He also served as chair of the Department of the History of Art at the School of Fine Arts.\n“Bruce taught here for a number of years, he knows the museum and its history, and as chairman of the NEH, he can speak to the importance of the arts,” Gealt said.\nThe ceremony will begin at 7 p.m. Friday. Students and the public are encouraged to attend.