New Installations to Debut at The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park Thanks to Transformative Gift from Kent Hawryluk

Newfields has announced a new series of outdoor public art installations for The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park that will activate the park and create dynamic opportunities for engagement and exploration.

A transformative $3 million gift by longtime Newfields patron and philanthropist Kent Hawryluk will support the ongoing commissioning and presentation of large-scale sculpture, creating The Hawryluk Collection of Art in Nature. This evolving series will be hosted on The Hawryluk Sculpture Green, located in the heart of The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park.

The initiative will launch in June 2023 with a site-responsive commission by artist Heather Hart, whose colorful interactive rooftop installations appear as if they have fallen from the sky, allowing visitors to climb through windows and doors and onto the roof. Hart's project, which will become a site for spontaneous and planned performances, workshops, and community discussions, will debut as part of a larger exhibition, Home Again. The exhibition will include two other sculptures centered around the notion of home and shelter by Anila Quayyum Agha and collaborators Mark Dion and Dana Sherwood. Home Again is themed around the refresh and rejuvenation of The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, bringing guests "home again" to experience and interact with new art installations part of The Hawryluk Collection of Art in Nature.

"We are immensely grateful to stalwart Newfields patron Kent Hawryluk, whose generous gift ensures that we can fulfill the original artistic vision for The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, which was to regularly commission and present new, site-specific temporary artworks," said Dr. Colette Pierce Burnette, President & CEO of Newfields. "By providing a platform for living artists to create ambitious large-scale public projects-and by providing free access to experience and engage with these artworks, as Newfields always has-this initiative further solidifies Newfields' role as a leader in offering world-class experiences at the intersection of art and nature."

The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park is one of the largest sculpture parks in the country, sited on 100 acres of land that includes woodlands, wetlands, a lake, and the largest native pollinator meadow in Indianapolis. Since its opening in 2010, The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park has been enlivened with site-specific contemporary artworks by Jeppe Hein, Atelier van Lieshout, Los Carpinteros, Alfredo Jaar and others, which remain on view. The gift from Hawryluk-which has established The Hawryluk Collection of Art in Nature and The Hawryluk Sculpture Green-will allow Newfields to continuously refresh the works in The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park.

"From its peaceful natural elements to the innovative contemporary artwork integrated seamlessly into the landscape, The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park is a source of inspiration, wonder, and sanctuary for me - and for the hundreds of thousands of visitors who stroll its grounds each year. As an Indiana native, I am proud to support this project and to help Newfields create a world-class resource in The Hawryluk Sculpture Green, with exciting opportunities for visitors to interact with art and nature in unique and unexpected ways," said Kent Hawryluk. "Over time, it is my hope that the Hawryluk Sculpture Green will become a must-see destination for not only art lovers, but everyone who visits our city."

Artworks featured in the Home Again exhibition, selected by the founding curator of The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, former Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) senior curator and chair of contemporary art, Dr. Lisa Freiman, include:

• Oracle of Intimation, a new site-responsive and participatory installation from Brooklyn-based artist Heather Hart. The roof-shaped sculpture will sit in The Hawryluk Sculpture Green as if the house has been buried underground. Constructed largely with recycled wood from fallen Maple, Sycamore, and Black Locust trees from The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, Oracle of Intimation will entice visitors to walk on and through the sculpture and to activate it by plugging smartphones into a built-in speaker to amplify music, spoken word, or other sounds. Newfields is also planning a wide-ranging series of public programs including performances, workshops, gatherings and other engagements with community partners.
• This is NOT a Refuge (2018) by Pakistan-born, Indianapolis-based artist Anila Quayyum Agha reflects on the loss and displacement experienced by refugees from various regions of the world. With Agha's signature laser-etched floral patterning inspired by Islamic art and architecture, the work is both perceptually soothing and conceptually challenging. Visitors may sit on a bench inside the white filigree house-shaped structure and listen to recordings of over a dozen immigrants and refugees living in Indianapolis who share stories that provide hope or humor within cultural differences, while others illustrate the reality of living within a system where the cards are stacked against them. These experiences are woven into a looping bed of sounds, instruments, and voices, representing the millions of immigrants who have shared in the journey to safety and relocation.
• The Pollinator Pavilion (2020), an interactive and collaborative architectural sculpture by Catskills-based artists Mark Dion and Dana Sherwood. The ornate 21.5-foot-tall gazebo is surrounded with native pollinating flowers and hummingbird feeders and decorated with original paintings by Sherwood. The pavilion, which is designed to attract birds, bees, moths, and other pollinators, enables visitors to slow down and become part of nature as they rest on a Victorian sofa from where they can observe the ecological process of pollination and feeding. In The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, the installation will include plantings indigenous to Indianapolis, complementing the work Newfields has done through The Wild Birds Unlimited Native Pollinator Meadow and other efforts to support pollinator populations and expand native species throughout The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park.

"Heather Hart's Oracle of Intimation perfectly complements the spirit of The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, which from the outset was conceived to be an open, dynamic, and wonderous place for people to explore art and nature. It is apt, then, for Hart to create the inaugural commission for this new series about what home means and why it matters and to anchor this exhibition in a park that for more than a decade has provided a space for Indy residents, visitors, and artists to return to time and again," said consulting curator Lisa Freiman. "The works by Anila Quayyum Agha and Mark Dion and Dana Sherwood will invigorate other areas of The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, taking visitors on a thematic journey that encourages them to interact with, explore, and consider their own notions of comfort and refuge."

These updates to The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park accompany recent and ongoing infrastructural upgrades as part of Newfields' 30-year master plan, which was unveiled in 2017. Completed projects include the creation of The Wild Birds Unlimited Native Pollinator Meadow; the installation of a multi-use path around the entirety of Newfields' perimeter, providing safe and accessible access for pedestrians and cyclists coming to and from The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park; and a new Pacers Bikeshare station to increase neighborhood connectivity and mobility. Ongoing work includes efforts to mitigate erosion along the banks of the White River, which runs along Newfields' campus, and the construction of a new permeable parking lot.

In addition, Newfields is commissioning a new play structure to replace Chop Stick, the swing set designed by Swedish architecture firm visiondivision that debuted in 2012 and was deinstalled in November 2022. More details on the new commission, which will also be located on The Hawryluk Sculpture Green, will be announced later this year.

About the Artists

Heather Hart, (b. Seattle, WA, lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the power in thresholds, questioning dominant narratives, and creating alternatives to them. Hart's work has been exhibited at the Queens Museum, Storm King Art Center, Albright-Knox Museum, The Kohler Art Center, NCMA, Eastern Illinois University, Seattle Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, University of Buffalo, and University of Toronto, Scarborough among others. She was awarded grants from Anonymous Was A Woman, the Graham Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation, NYFA, and Harpo Foundation. Hart co-founded Black Lunch Table in 2005 and has won a Creative Capital award, Wikimedia Foundation grants, an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant and an Andy Warhol Foundation of Art grant with that project. Hart is an Assistant Professor at Mason Gross School for Art + Design, a member of the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums, an external advisor for AUC Art Collective, and a trustee at Storm King Art Center. She studied at Skowhegan, Whitney ISP, Cornish College of the Arts, Princeton University and received her MFA from Rutgers University. Hart was a 2021-2022 Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She is represented by Davidson Gallery in New York.

Anila Quayyum Agha was born in Lahore, Pakistan, and received her BFA from the National College of Arts, Lahore and an MFA from the University of North Texas. Major solo shows include the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, TX; Columbia Art Museum in South Carolina; Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, National Sculpture Museum in Valladolid, Spain, The Dallas Contemporary Art Museum, Cincinnati Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, FL. Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, North Carolina Art Museum in Raleigh, and the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio. For the 2019 Venice Biennial, Agha was included in a collateral event, She Persists, with 22 contemporary feminist artists. Agha has received the Efroymson Art Fellowship, Cincinnati Art Museum's 2017 Schiele Prize, the DeHaan Artist of Distinction Award twice (2018 & 2021) and the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors award in 2019. Agha's 2014 ArtPrize entry, titled "Intersections", earned the Public Vote Grand Prize and split the Juried Grand Prize in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 2020, Agha received an Endowed Chair position titled Morris Eminent Scholar in Art at Augusta University in Georgia, as well as the prestigious Smithsonian Fellowship in the arts for 2021 and worked with both SAAM and AAA in Washington DC in May 2022. Her work has been collected by both institutions and private collectors; nationally and internationally.

Mark Dion was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1961. He received a BFA (1986) and an honorary doctorate (2003) from the University of Hartford, Hartford Art School, and attended the Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Study Program. He also has an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (Ph.D.) from The Wagner Free Institute of Science in Philadelphia (2015). Dion's work examines the ways in which dominant ideologies and public institutions shape our understanding of history, knowledge, and the natural world. Appropriating archaeological, field ecology and other scientific methods of collecting, ordering, and exhibiting objects, Dion creates works that question the distinctions between 'objective' ('rational') scientific methods and 'subjective' ('irrational') influences. Dion also frequently collaborates with museums of natural history, aquariums, zoos and other institutions mandated to produce public knowledge on the topic of nature. By locating the roots of environmental politics and public policy in the construction of knowledge about nature, Mark Dion questions the objectivity and authoritative role of the scientific voice in contemporary society, tracking how pseudo-science, social agendas and ideology creep into public discourse and knowledge production. He is the co-director of Mildred's Land an innovative visual art education and residency program in Beach Lake, Dion lives with his wife and frequent collaborator Dana Sherwood in Copake, New York and works worldwide.

Dana Sherwood is an American artist whose diverse practice explores the relationship between humans and the natural world in order to understand culture and behavior in a changing environment. In her work, nature, often in the form of non-human animals, plays a complex role as both subject and collaborator, asserting its presence and subverting the artists' perceived control. Since graduating from the University of Maine in 2004 Sherwood has exhibited throughout The Americas, Europe and Australia including solo exhibitions at Nagle-Draxler Reiseburogalerie (Cologne), Denny Dimin Gallery (New York) and Kepler Art-Conseil (Paris). Her work has also been shown at Storm King (New York), The Jack Shainman School, The Fellbach Sculpture Triennial (Germany), Pink Summer Gallery (Italy), Kunsthal Aarhus, The Palais des Beaux Arts Paris, Marian Boesky Gallery, Socrates Sculpture Park, Flux Factory, The Biennial of Western New York, Prospect 2: New Orleans, Scotia Bank Nuit Blanche (Toronto), dOCUMENTA 13, and many other venues worldwide. She opened her first solo museum exhibition at the Florence Griswold Museum in 2022.

Newfields offers dynamic experiences with art and nature for guests of all ages. The 152-acre cultural campus features art galleries, lush gardens, a historic home, performance spaces, a nature preserve and sculpture park. From inspiring exhibitions in the IMA Galleries, to concerts in The Toby, to a stroll through The Garden with a glass of something cold, guests are invited to interact with art and nature in exciting new ways. Newfields is home to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, among the ten largest and ten oldest general art museums in the nation; the Lilly House, a National Historic Landmark; The Garden, featuring 40 acres of contemporary and historic gardens, a working greenhouse and an orchard; and The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, one of the largest art and nature parks in the country. The Newfields campus extends outside of Indianapolis with Miller House and Garden in Columbus, Ind.-one of the nation's most highly regarded examples of mid-century Modernist architecture. For more information, visit DiscoverNewfields.org.

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