Newfields announces new subject for the Lume after van Gogh closes this month

As the first iteration of the Lume comes to a close at the end of the month, Newfields on Wednesday announced the new main subject that will open July 3: Monet & Friends Alive. 

Running through May 28, 2023, the immersive installation will project works by artists including Paul Cezanne, Camille Pissarro and Pierre-Auguste Renoir alongside those by Claude Monet. The show will present Impressionism across three movements: Metropolitan, A Day in the Life and En Plein Air. 

Nineteenth-century Paris will be the theme throughout, and the final gallery will show original paintings, drawings and sculptures from Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Cezanne and Monet, among others. The musical score will include Claude Debussy, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Maurice Ravel and Jacques Offenbach.

Grande Experiences will again work with the museum on the exhibit. Announcements on the specific paintings and subjects of the featurettes will be forthcoming.

The Lume covers the Indianapolis Museum of Art's fourth floor, which is about 30,000 square feet.

It opened in July 2021 with projected images of Vincent van Gogh's work. It has presented a repeated hour-long show from about 150 projectors that animate details from the paintings and show featurettes inspired by the artist's life. A classical music score, wafts of citrusy scents and snacks that riff off the artwork make it a multisensory experience. 

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The Lume has become the most-attended exhibit in Newfields history, interim President Jerry Wise said at the institution's annual meeting Wednesday. More than 235,000 people visited in its first year, he said. 

The Lume has been one of a number of recent changes Newfields has made indoors. In December, it opened "Embodied: Human Figures in Art" on the second floor, which began a test phase of what will be a dramatic reorganization of its permanent collection. 

After almost four years being closed for renovations, the institution in March reopened the Clowes Pavilion with a new digital ceiling that glows above the famed indoor courtyard. Around it, masterworks are arranged in conversation around topics including landscape, identity through portraiture, classical antiquity and women's influence.

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Contact IndyStar reporter Domenica Bongiovanni at 317-444-7339 or d.bongiovanni@indystar.com. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter: @domenicareports.