The Indianapolis Museum of Art has commissioned an inventive concession stand from the Swedish architecture duo Visiondivision for 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, which will begin construction this summer. Visiondivision’s first realized project in the United States, Chop Stick will offer Park visitors a place to sit, swing, and enjoy refreshments in an outdoor pavilion crafted almost entirely from a single tree. Chop Stick will open in summer 2012. Premiering this September will be the previously announced commission FLOW (Can You See the River?), a site-specific installation along Indianapolis’ White River by New York-based artist Mary Miss. In addition to these two new projects, environmental artist Katherine Ball will be the 2011 summer resident on Andrea Zittel’s Indianapolis Island, an inhabitable island that was one of the Park’s original commissions.
Located on 100 acres of land that includes untamed woodlands, wetlands, a lake, and meadows adjacent to the Museum, 100 Acres is one of the largest museum art parks in the country and one of only a few to feature the ongoing commission of temporary, site-responsive artworks. 100 Acres opened in June 2010 with eight newly commissioned works by Atelier Van Lieshout, Kendall Buster, Alfredo Jaar, Jeppe Hein, Los Carpinteros, Tea Mäkipää, Type A and Andrea Zittel, as well as a LEED-certified visitor center and numerous walking trails that highlight the indigenous landscape. Since its opening, 100 Acres has drawn diverse audiences to the museum’s grounds and resulted in a 67% increase in attendance during the summer months as compared to past years.
“In less than a year since its opening, 100 Acres has become a defining feature of the city of Indianapolis and an example of how museums can make art accessible and important to the community,” said Maxwell L. Anderson, The Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO of the IMA. “We are pleased to see that the Park has also served to bring new visitors into the Museum.”
Visiondivision’s concession stand design for 100 Acres employs a single, 100-foot-tall yellow poplar tree—the state tree of Indiana—as its primary raw material. The tree, found in a forest near Anderson, Ind., was transported to 100 Acres with a large portion of its limbs intact and will be oriented and engineered to form the central horizontal beam of the structure. Portions of the tree will be strategically removed to create the concession stand—including swings, benches, tables, and light fixtures. The tree’s bark has been carefully removed and will be made into shingles that will adorn the façade of the concession stand.
Visiondivision’s design for Chop Stick is based on the premise that every product—whether it is a cell phone, a car, a stone floor, or a wooden building—is a compound of different elements of nature, each of which are harvested in specific ways. Chop Stick will function as a rich educational tool that reveals the processes that are usually hidden as trees are harvested and undergo refinement and transformation into structures.
“We envisioned 100 Acres as a new model for sculpture parks in the 21st century, and it has delivered on that promise,” said Lisa Freiman, senior curator and chair of the IMA’s Department of Contemporary Art. “Visiondivision’s imaginative concession stand is perfectly in line with the mission of 100 Acres, which strives to present art, architecture, and design that provoke a reexamination of humanity’s multifaceted relationship with the environment.”
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