COURTESY NEWFIELDS
The Indianapolis Museum of Art is uniting its 152-acre campus, which includes the Lilly House historic estate, the Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, and the IMA itself under a new name: Newfields, a Place for Nature and the Arts.
Each of those venues will now add “at Newfields” to their names, according to the Indianapolis Star, which reports that the change was motivated by a desire to draw a larger audience by emphasizing the campus’s attractions beyond art and to increase revenue. (Thank you to critic Tyler Green for pointing us to the Star story.) The IMA currently has about $80 million of debt. Its endowment, as of its fiscal year 2015–16 report, stood at about $343 million.
New programming will also be rolled out as part of the shift, which was conceived with the support of a $10 million gift from the Lilly Endowment in 2015. The new name plays off the Oldfields estate, also the Lilly family donated in 1966.
“We could not be who we are today without the Lilly’s generous donation of the Oldfields estate, and generations of dedicated supporters of both art and nature.” said Dr. Charles L. Venable, the institution’s director and CEO. “Newfields is a nod to our legacy as the ‘new’ property that the Lilly’s added to the original estate.”
The Newfields name will officially debut in early October.