Last year, the Indianapolis Public Library announced its new Arts Indiana Digitization Project. The archive preserves the 22-year legacy of the magazine, Arts Indiana, which was the go-to for all things arts and culture in the state from 1979 to 2001.
The magazine, led by publisher Ann Stack, covered independent film festivals, complaints about the arts, fleeting local galleries and a feminist bookstore born out of the women’s movement of the 1970s. You can now access the Arts Indiana Magazine collection for free, which also contains the literary anthology Hopewell Review, old performing arts and art gallery guides and postcards.
There’s nothing like being in a flow state while going down a history rabbit hole. The archives transported me to a time when creativity felt limitless in Indianapolis, although some things haven’t changed a whole lot. Our city is still scrappy and innovative.
Some things I learned: The Indy Art Center used to be referred to as the Indianapolis Art League. At one point, the state had an active film council and an Indianapolis Public School radio station, WIAN FM 90.1. And I saw a 1992 advertisement for poet and activist Nikki Giovanni’s appearance at Butler University’s Visiting Writer Series.
I was even able to reflect on the role of local arts and culture coverage and spot a few bylines from arts reporters like Steve Mannheimer and Lou Harry.
Here are some of my favorite finds from the collection.
15 years of funky postcards
From 1981-1996, Arts Insight magazine (the former name of Arts Indiana magazine) hosted an annual juried art contest. The top 12 pieces were reprinted as postcards available for sale in the Postcard Art Series. The series was a way to recognize visual artists from around the state and generate income for the magazine.
Shortridge High School for the Performing Arts
I did not know my alma mater — Shortridge High School — was once a performing arts magnet school. I was only familiar with the program at Broad Ripple High School. Admission was based on an audition application, which occurred in the spring.
For the May 1979 issue of Arts Insight, Gillian Koch wrote about the program’s success. She noted that the magnet school was considered to be a useful tool for the desegregation of Indianapolis Public Schools.
The school offered dance, radio and television, theater, visual arts, language and literature for performance. Later additions to the school’s curriculum included voice acting for theater students, architecture and cinematography.
Classes were held all over the city, including at Indianapolis Arts League (now Indy Arts Center) and the former IPS Center for Instructional Radio and Television in the Fletcher Place neighborhood.
“The motto at SPA is to provide an exceptional program without an exceptional price, especially suited to the students of Indianapolis,” Koch wrote.
Foreign Film Festival in Castleton Square
International films are easy to find on big screens across Naptown, especially now with arthouse cinemas like Kan-Kan Cinema & Bar. Back in 1977, the former Castleton Square General Cinema put on an annual foreign film festival in the fall.
Arts Insight covered the 1982 festival, which opened with “My Dinner with Andre,” a film about two playwrights who play fictionalized versions of themselves having dinner in a NYC restaurant. According to the reporters Della K. Panchero and Richard M. Hurst, the film sold more weekday tickets at the cinema than Steve Spielberg’s blockbuster “E.T.” Matinee tickets were only $2.
That year the festival included films from Brazil, France, Scotland, Japan and New Zealand.
Charles Mauer, manager of the cinema, said the films were selected by a team in Chicago, but he also gathered input from local viewers and professors.
‘Feminist bookstore growing rapidly’
In 1982, Harriet Van Deusen opened Dreams and Swords, a feminist family bookstore. A year later, the store found a home at 828 E. 64th St. in Broad Ripple. Dreams and Swords sold vinyl records by feminist and LGBTQ+ musical artists, hard-to-find feminist literature, T-shirts, calendars and Christmas cards as well as best sellers like Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple.”
Van Deusen said her bookstore was sometimes mistaken for a Christian or fantasy bookstore due to its name.
Why did she decide to open her own bookstore? Van Deusen told reporter Judith Rue:
“Since I was a little kid, I’ve wanted to own a bookstore. And for most of my life, I didn’t think I could. The woman’s movement and my support group back in the ’70s made me believe it was possible.”
Poetry On the Buses
Placards inside of city buses usually contain advertisements for companies. But what if they contained local art? From 1984-1993, the Indianapolis Public Transportation Corporation (now IndyGo) put poems — written by Indianapolis poets through its Poetry on the Buses series — inside its city buses. The project was funded by the Indiana Arts Commission and National Endowment for the Arts.
In its first edition, former Indianapolis four-term mayor William Hudnut wrote, “It is my sincere hope that you will find enjoyment and possibly participate in Poetry on the Bus as it adds an innovative dimension to the Indianapolis Arts Community.”
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Mirror Indy reporter Mesgana Waiss covers arts and culture. Contact her at 317-667-2643 or mesgana.waiss@mirrorindy.org.
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