Newfields' new galaxy-like digital ceiling is at the center of a revamped Clowes Pavilion

Newfields' Clowes Pavilion always felt like a secret oasis earned through pilgrimage. Voyagers had to wind through second-floor galleries to find the entrance. But once they arrived, any confusion during the journey was forgotten because they stood in the midst of some of the world's most talked-about paint strokes. Rembrandt's "Self-Portrait" and El Greco's saints are among the works that have hung in intimate rooms around a limestone-ringed indoor courtyard.

The pavilion reopens Friday for its 50th anniversary after almost four years of being closed for renovations. Before that, only 12% of Indianapolis Museum of Art visitors entered its realms, said Chief Operating Officer Katie Haigh, citing the museum's research. The goal, of course, is for that to change.

Two entrances now lead to a stunning new centerpiece — a digital ceiling that glows over the famous courtyard. Its reputation will undoubtedly spread via social media videos shot by awed visitors who linger beneath. It's the ultimate contemporary complement to the longstanding Clowes Old Masters, which are now specifically paired to be in conversation with works from the rest of the museum's holdings.

The unveiling is the second in a series of re-installations of the permanent collection that began earlier this year with "Embodied: Human Figures in Art," which is adjacent. In a move the museum is calling "global thematic display," Newfields reorganizing works according to themes, shifting away from groupings solely determined by time periods and artistic movements.

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In Clowes, about 90 works of art are arranged in rooms that still reflect the home of the Clowes family, the collection's benefactor. Next to a refreshed set of companions, the masterworks of the Italian, Spanish, Netherlandish and German schools, among others, are speaking differently than they once did, revealing fresh angles of longstanding topics that include landscape, identity through portraiture, classical antiquity and women's influence.

Cosmic ceiling and nods to the past

In 1972, an Indianapolis Star reporter called the glowing skylight above the pavilion's courtyard "dreamlike." 2022's new digital ceiling takes the descriptor into the realm of downright cosmic.

Across more than 500 connected ultra-high definition LED panels, up-close videos of paint swirl and bubble on a glass plate in scenes that Haigh likened to a galaxy. Throughout a 60-minute cycle, the images morph into wider shots around Newfields' campus, like the underside of gnarled tree branches with clouds passing overhead. The ceiling stretches 47 by 31 feet.

"There's something really cool about taking small things and blowing them up really big," said Kevin Winkler, who owns digital arts specialist Blockhouse Studios, which worked with Tyler Truss, Neoti and Dodd Technologies on the ceiling.

Seating beneath will give visitors all the tools they need to settle in and stare.

The centerpiece courtyard and its fountain were among the buzziest of attributes at the 1972 opening. The space was designed specifically to house the Clowes Collection and honor its benefactors.

As the director of research at Eli Lilly and Co., Dr. George Henry Alexander Clowes was known for spearheading the company's effort to mass produce insulin in the 1920s. His and Edith Whitehill Clowes' family once lived at Westerley House and Gardens, just south of where the museum is now. Some gallery spaces in the pavilion — like the library — nodded to the mansion, according to IndyStar archives.

The Clowes Collection comprises about 100 works of art, which doesn't include some that the family gave the museum previously, said Kjell Wangensteen, associate curator of European Art. It includes sculpture, paintings, decorative arts and, of course, the Old Masters — the well-known European artists who were active before 1800. Paintings from the collection are cataloged at a booth inside the re-installation and online at paintings.theclowescollection.org.

The collection was moved to the museum on indefinite loan in 1971, according to the Clowes Fund website. In 1999, the fund's board decided to donate it to the institution over a period of time. The art transfers were paused last year after the controversy over language in the director job description and will resume when the fund's board sees enough progress on the museum's action plan, according to the site.

The post, which included maintaining the organization's "traditional, core, white art audience" while diversifying patrons, resulted in a public outcry, the resignation of then-president Charles Venable and an apology signed by both boards.

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The museum closed the pavilion in 2018 for renovations, which included repairing infrastructure, updating electrical and lighting capabilities, redoing flooring and ceilings, adding accessibility, and performing conservation work on the art, Haigh said.

Paired works show new details

The remodeled space is cozy but feels roomier than before. The connections between newly paired works of art feel limitless. Between 25% and 30% of the pieces currently on view are from the Clowes family, with the rest from the museum's permanent collection, Wangensteen said.

To accomplish that, he and Annette Schlagenhauff, curator of European Art, had to select works that wouldn't compete when placed beside one another.

"Our eye is kind of naturally drawn to contemporary works, so we really have to calibrate those discussions carefully," Wangensteen said.

The idea makes a dramatic entrance with two tapestries. El Anatsui's 2007 "Duvor (communal cloth)" hangs next to Hendrik Mattens' "The Miraculous Draught of Fishes" from about 1630. The former previously hung on the fourth floor before The Lume was installed, and the latter recently underwent extensive conservation to fight the long-term effects of light and gravity.

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Anatsui references the slave and liquor trade by weaving in bottlecaps, while tapestries like Mattens' wove in imported materials and expensive silk and threads of gold and silver.

"Both of these objects are emblematic of kind of the burgeoning world trade that's going on at different moments," Wangensteen said.

The curators use contemporary works to look at new facets of traditional themes. In the gallery that explores women's influence, for example, the art shows them both as subjects through men's eyes and as artists telling their own stories. A wall asks visitors to reflect on women they know who have shaped their lives.

One wall holds "Battle of Theseus and the Amazons" by Domenico di Michelino. It shows Amazons, mythological warrior women, fighting Theseus' army on what was one side of a wooden marriage chest that a bride would have used to carry her belongings to her new home. Art historians know the chest comments on gender roles in 15th-century Florentine society, but they're still debating its full meaning, Schlagenhauff said.

"It may very well suggest that entering marriage is not going to be just flowers and roses," Schlagenhauff said.

Just above the piece of chest hangs an electronic LED sign by Jenny Holzer from 1983. Across it flashes what the artist calls truisms, or adages, that vacillate between feminist, sharp, humorous and mundane. "Deviants are sacrificed to increase group solidarity" and "Disgust is the appropriate response to most situations" read a few in alphabetical order.

Art that speaks across rooms

Given the galleries' domestic feel and intimate space, the pieces don't have to be side by side to reveal conversations. Art nestles into bookshelf-like nooks in a room that echoes the decor of Westerley's library. At one station, visitors can draw a digital portrait that will appear in a frame on the wall.

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In this room, Rembrandt's "Self-Portrait" shines not far from a work that was commissioned to be inspired by it.

Light cascades across his face and his mouth is slightly open. Nearby, the light and parted lips of Bidou Yamaguchi's "No Mask ('Rembrandt') from 2017-2018 reflect the "Self-Portrait" but take it further. The traditional Japanese No art form uses masks to show emotions through subtle head movements.

Just a few steps away, another work hanging over the mantel will play on visitors' minds, even if they don't realize it. Bill Viola's slow-looping video from 2000, "The Quintet of the Silent," shows five actors positioned as if in a Renaissance painting. Slowly — almost so much so that it's easy to miss — their faces show the onslaught and release of pressure, tension and stress.

"We have a captive audience in this space," Schlagenhauff said. "They look once at that and then hopefully move around the edges and then they'll look back at it and it will have moved."

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Contact IndyStar reporter Domenica Bongiovanni at 317-444-7339 or [email protected]. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter: @domenicareports.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Newfields' new galaxy-like digital ceiling inside latest museum revamp