A 125-year-old dairy barn that’s been converted into a contemporary art museum will open May 1 in the Garfield Park neighborhood.
The Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis, or CAMi, is the first museum dedicated to contemporary art in the city since iMOCA closed abruptly in April 2020.
Jim Walker and Shauta Marsh, co-founders of Big Car Collaborative, said the 40,000-square-foot museum will house six exhibition spaces and galleries, 18 artist studios, five storefronts for creative businesses, a performance space, a cafe and a culinary arts area. Big Car, a nonprofit founded in 2004, owns the building and manages the $7 million project.
The public will be able to visit the CAMi for free. Its first exhibition will feature Puerto Rican painter Ivelisse Jiménez in the Jeremy Efroymson Gallery.
If you go
Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi)
📍 1125 Cruft St.
📅 Opening weekend May 1-3
Highlights
- Six exhibition spaces and galleries
- 18 artist studios
- Five storefronts for creative businesses
- One performance space
- Culinary arts area and cafe
Follow Big Car on Instagram for updates.
No security guards, no stern signage
CAMi is expected to draw people from all over; Conde Nast Traveler just named it one of the 2026 Best Places to Visit in the U.S. Walker, Big Car’s executive director, and Marsh, program director and chief curator, said they want to offer a welcoming environment at the new museum.
For example, when people walk in, they’ll be greeted by a DJ who might play their song requests and offer them the mic. Security guards won’t be trailing visitors; instead, people can explore on their own, using a map. And while Marsh said they don’t want you to touch the artwork, they’ll post explanations for the rules rather than demanding signs.
“We want to remove the barrier that contemporary art is for the elite, or that it’s only for a certain type of person,” Marsh told Mirror Indy during a Dec. 2 tour of the space.
Contemporary art is defined as art made by living artists, but Marsh expands the definition to include art made after World War II. CAMi will exhibit works and feature performances by local, national and international artists.
CAMi is the name for the entire five-acre campus along Cruft Street that includes not only the new museum, but also a new sculpture park; the nearly 10-year-old Tube Factory artspace, renamed the Tube Gallery; the WQRT 99.1 FM radio station; and 18 affordable homes for artists and their families.
Bryn Jackson, a sculptor, rents a home through Big Car’s Artist and Public Life Residency. In exchange for doing 16 hours of work in the community and working for CAMi, he pays rent that’s about half of average prices in the area.
Currently, he is working to remove invasive species and plant native species around a stretch of Bean Creek that flows through the CAMi campus, to address environmental issues such as flooding and erosion.
Jackson said the new museum’s relationship with artists is different because CAMi won’t be acquiring or collecting any art. It will focus solely on paying artists to create work for exhibitions.
“We will have an institution that is geared towards giving artists space to dream big, to be ambitious, because there’s not that added layer of stewarding a major collection,” he said.
Walker said artist studios will rent for about $500 a month, including utilities. Big Car is accepting applications from artists for studios and from business owners for the storefronts.
‘It’s like a second life for iMOCA’
The 40,000-square-foot structure has a long history, with five additions built over 75 years.
The first two buildings were built by the bottling facility Weber Milk Company in the early 1900s. Tube Processing, the manufacturing company that gave the Tube Factory artspace its name, added three buildings. It was the last business to use the space. The company, which relocated to East Legrande Avenue about 20 years ago, donated the industrial buildings to Big Car in 2021.
For the design of the museum, Walker said they wanted to keep the raw and unfinished elements of the building. For example, they will keep the poles that still have markings from where dairy cows were tied up and not re-cover some old plastered walls.
Big Car worked with two Indianapolis firms: Jungclaus-Campbell on the renovation and Blackline Studio on the adaptive reuse design.
They said they took inspiration from other museums that converted old spaces like MOCAD in Detroit, which used to be in an auto dealership; MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass., housed in a former print works factory; and The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, which was built on a military installation, Fort D. A. Russell.
CAMi is the latest project for Big Car, known for popular events such as First Friday gallery openings at the Tube Gallery and SPARK on the Circle. The organization, which was founded in Fountain Square, operated out of the Lafayette Square Mall until 2014, when it moved to Garfield Park. Marsh and Walker have lived in the neighborhood since 2011.
CAMi was created after the city lost its only contemporary art museum, iMOCA, founded in 2001 as a “museum without walls.”
Marsh led iMOCA between 2011 and 2015, when she stepped away from her role as executive director. For two years prior, she worked under Jeremy Efroymson, who was the executive director.
In its 19 years of operation, iMOCA bounced around spaces like the Emelie Building, Murphy Arts Center and the Alexander Hotel. Financial issues plagued the museum, forcing it to close during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
CAMi, Marsh said, “is building on iMOCA, which gave us great artists. It’s like a second life for the museum.”
CAMi’s funding primarily comes from philanthropic organizations, including Lilly Endowment Inc.; the Allen Whitehill Clowes Family Foundation; Efroymson Family Fund; Herbert Simon Family Foundation; Katharine B. Sutphin Foundation; Frank and Katrina Basile; the Seybert Family Foundation; and Tube Processing.
Big Car is still trying to raise $1.7 million for maintenance costs for the main museum building.
Visit camindy.org to make a donation or apply for an artist studio or creative business storefront.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the years that Marsh served as executive director of iMOCA.
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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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