Moment of Indiana History
shows Archive
September 22, 2008
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Sandy Allen
Although she inhabited the upper reaches, Sandy Allen was remarkably down-to-earth. Recognized by Guinness World Records as the World’s Tallest Woman in 1975, the Shelbyville resident held that title until her death August 13, 2008.
September 15, 2008
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Conn Instruments
As another outdoor concert season draws to a close, it’s a good moment to reflect—as shiny brass instruments tend to do—on the origins of the band instrument industry and the band movement in the U.S.
September 8, 2008
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Peaceful Valley
Having marked Nashville’s centennial as “The Art Colony of the Midwest” in 2007, it’s easy to forget that the Brown County village was not always the epicenter of the visual arts in Indiana. A significant regional school of painting developed in the Wayne County town of Richmond in the late nineteenth century, of which the Richmond Palette Club and the Richmond Prize were manifestations.
August 25, 2008
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Art Colonies of the Midwest
In 1900, T.C. Steele’s landscape The Bloom of the Grape , painted on-site in Indiana’s Muscatatuck Valley just a few years earlier, won an honorable mention at the Paris Universal Exposition. The painters who were putting Indiana on the map at the turn of the twentieth century were members of a transitional generation.
August 18, 2008
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Midwestern Impressionism
When T.C. Steele and colleagues returned to Indiana in the mid-1880’s after studying at Munich’s Royal Academy of Painting, their canvases evinced the tonal realism they’d absorbed there.
August 11, 2008
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Hoosier School’s German Roots
The dappled light and broken brushstrokes of the landscape paintings that belong to the Hoosier School seem indebted to the French movements of impressionism and post-impressionism. But the paintings’ true background is more precisely German.
August 4, 2008
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100 Year Flood
When purchasing home insurance one anticipates every contingency, including such events as a “100 Year Flood.” In June 2008, Hoosiers in south-central Indiana learned exactly how formidable that event could be. The state’s hydrologist officially termed the 2008 deluge a “100 Year Flood” when water levels broke records set during the Great Flood of 1913. […]
July 28, 2008
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Bill Peet
Frequently clashing with his boss during his 27 years at Disney, Bill Peet left in 1964 to pursue a career as a children’s book author, which he initiated with Hubert’s Hair Raising Adventure . He is considered by some to be part of a triumvirate that includes Maurice Sendak and Dr. Seuss.
July 21, 2008
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Garfield’s Human
“Way down deep, we’re all motivated by the same urges,” Fairmount-born cartoonist Jim Davis once suggested. “Cats have the courage to live by them—that’s what Garfield is all about.” Davis must have been on to something—his comic strip about the fat orange tabby that debuted in 1978 is now the most widely syndicated comic strip in the world.
July 14, 2008
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West College Corner
From the Crispus Attacks Tigers to the Milan miracle, the annals of Indiana high school basketball provide an endless source of inspiration and emotion. One chapter in Hoosier hoops history has also been a source of whimsy, not to mention logistical and legal confusion.
