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>> Good evening.

I'm Bruce Haines.

It was in late eighteen hundreds that Fort Wayne opened its doors to an art school and after operating in various locations the school grew to include a museum in 1920 when Theodore theme a prominent Fort Wayne citizen donated his home and a collection of 10 paintings and then across the succeeding decades the Fort Wayne Museum of Art would soon build a new downtown home.

The art school would partner with Indiana University to offer a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and the museum's collection would expand to thousands of American paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and photographs and as collections information specialist Suzanne Slick explains, it's been a great century to celebrate at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art we've just celebrated 100 years of our existence that came out of the birth of the formal art school in nineteen twenty two.

So there are a lot of people that we have to appreciate, think and and think of on this long path to where we are now the great philanthropy that went into supporting the little school and then the larger school and then the museum and we wouldn't be here without all of that talent, dedication, hard work and just desire to build an arts culture in the city and we're quite fortunate to have that and it's lasted for a long time when I was doing the research for the exhibit about the art school, I was really taken with the idea of students studying art there for 70 years nineteen twenty two till nineteen ninety two and when I was a student there I didn't think about those things at all.

I knew it was an old campus and it had been around for a while.

I didn't really know the history but looking back at the old photos there were students in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s all studying the same things that I did in the 1970s and early 1980s.

They all all of us enjoyed that campus.

There was a nice atmosphere there.

There was a lot of hard work going on all the time.

A lot of interesting work, lots of fun too.

We we all just I think reveled in our our work and the good times that we had there and the good guidance of our instructors.

>> And you can see more of Suzanne Slick's extensive research on the history of the Fort Wayne Art School by visiting our Arts and Focus page you can find under local programs on our Web site PBS Fort Wayne Dog.

But for tonight we honor the Fort Wayne Museum of Arts 100 plus years.

We're going to hear a little more about its future plans on this edition of Prime Time.

Joining us is Charles Shepard, Fort Wayne Museum of Arts President CEO and we invite you to join the conversation if you like.

You can call in your questions and comments by just using the number you see on the screen as we widen out and prove to you that Charles Sheppard is here.

>> Thank you for joining us, sir.

>> Hey, very happy to be here, Bruce .

Thank you for inviting me.

You know, I know life often still sometimes sends clouds over on a sunny day and I was thinking of bookends of a 100 year celebration.

The museum is essentially kickstarted as the world is coming out of the Spanish flu and your trying to celebrate a century of service right at the time that the world is in the midst of covid-19 I'm sorry.

>> Well, you know, that's exactly right.

But here's what it shows perseverance, optimism and you just keep moving forward no matter what sets you back a little bit here and there and thankfully to do things thankfully I wasn't there for the Spanish flu.

We came out of the covid situation pretty well.

>> Yeah.

And you know, I think about that too that you were having as steward of this this asset this wonderful community asset you were stewarding an experience that was already having its momentum at the Hamilton family carriage house at a local drugstore.

Instructors coming and going.

>> I want to bring up the image of what might be thought of as a founding father of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art and that would be Theodore theme.

>> Tell me about that.

Well, Thierer of theme was a galvanizing influence in that he looked at the great energy and passion and vision of this cluster of people at the art school who who dreamed of great things and he snapped the whip and he said great dream of great things.

>> But if you want me to fund you and if you want to be serious about your dream, you got to move forward in a concrete way.

>> You got to incorporate the bylaws.

>> You've got to be real.

And in that way I think Theodore galvanized everyone to straighten up and fly right.

And let's get this thing going and they did and that to me was a thing of beauty and then some of the success of images from the launch of that where the museum was as much an extension of the classroom, those who participated and I assume perhaps the descendants of those in these pictures are able to come in today to be able to see that they learned in a very unique setting and and probably could tell too that there was an energy there being shoulder to shoulder with colleagues also wanting to learn.

>> I think that's absolutely true.

Bruce .

>> And I think that a thing that our viewers ought to think about is that across America the the evolving situation was that we wanted to find a way to teach more people to be artists because Europe had academies we did not and and in the teaching process we needed to show them other live artists doing work to inspire the students and the faculty pretty much to to charge forth where these more illustrious people had gone and that's why the the museum portion originally a gallery portion came into being and it inspired both the instructors and the students as I say and then of course that little gallery might want to get bigger and bigger until it's a museum and that's exactly what happened.

>> And when I think of that, of course folks today are familiar with Castle Gallery if they hear of that expression in the west central neighborhood that at one point in time the art school and museum it was a whole campus affair there right along Barry and Rockhill in that neck of the woods.

But then you reach a place where even that exceeds the square footage provided and plans are made and this is where you say, you know, you don't get a century like this every hundred years.

>> You know, you really take a lot of there's the Mosman home and even it I'm sure you have a living well and this was indeed in America a time that art was either the visual arts were either going to take root or retreat and the momentum and the energy and the vision was we need to proceed.

>> So if you consider in the light of other American cities where the same art school museum model was present, Fort Wayne was one of the few places where actually the art school and museum found ways to separate and give each other freedom to grow with no animosity.

>> The faculty from the art school was delighted to go with the university of of course benefits and Summers offered a variety of things and the museum all of a sudden then had property and you know, buildings to sell and a decision to either keep that property in those buildings and continue or to sell them and make an actual professional museum which is what we did in the end and everyone ended up on a harmonious playing beautiful thing did not happen across America in the same way lots of animosity other places none here.

>> Well, and we we're in the middle of a Bill Blass celebration.

We find that he was one of the alumni of of the art school and other educators, other practitioners who are still contributing today.

The word that keeps coming up in looking at the history of the art museum is I kept seeing the word transformational gifts that were transformational collections that were that became transformational.

How does an art museum focus in on what it wants to collect and display for for folks and the means by which the collecting in the displaying you have four pillars that that call your your work forward and that that collecting and curating are two of them.

>> Well and they are indeed.

>> And I think the you could answer the question how to move forward in a dozen different ways we in the last twenty years have looked to one primary source and that's what we sense the feeling in the community is has been is now might become what would they see what would they enjoy, what would make them feel invited and comfortable and that that's very big for my team because that's the background I come from.

>> I'm not trying to answer first an art historical question or a curatorial question.

>> I'm first trying to answer what is everybody in Krvger on the South Side?

Tell me about what I'm doing and believe me they come right up and they tell you I love that I didn't like that.

>> What was wrong with this Michael Jilli fabulous glass fabulous.

>> Oh that weird thing.

Not some fabulous so you listen and then you plan and and in that planning let me say to other than you know very different from other museums we don't put permanent collection out in most of the galleries with some changing shows we pretty much do twenty two changing shows a year so that we can speak to the quilter, the painter, the printmaker, the glass artist all the people that love different things.

>> Wow.

There's something new.

There's something different.

I better get down there.

I better see it.

Yeah and it seems the niche that has really been a wonderful entryway into understanding art is the American Art Initiative that came to be earlier in this whole millennium, right?

>> Yeah.

The American Art Initiative started about 2007 and the whole impetus for that was that we as Americans you particularly in the 20th century have sometimes acted embarrassed about who you are and how we came to be and what we made and granted Europe had art first we had it not only second but we had it very secondary because we had no trained people, no, but what did we do in furniture making in painting and printmaking and all those different creative environments?

>> What did we do that we Americans should pay attention to historically and then see how those came to fruition in later generations even up through pop and abstract expressionism and things of today?

>> How did that all happen?

>> So that was a big push for me early on and it was well received I have to say it was really well received.

>> It's just very difficult for museum to show and acquire things of historical America because there are few and they're very pricey.

>> Yes, there's the wish list.

Yes.

And and then perhaps the occasional phone call or letter that says we'd like to give you this.

>> It's been in our family for a while and you realize I mean PBS for winning viewers know Antiques Roadshow and they you've had that in your home all these years, you know, and now you realize that it's it's truly a valuable item but it has a legacy to it itself that now can be shared.

>> That's exactly right.

>> And it's just how it happens as we as a museum in Fort Wayne started telling people were interested in the history of American art and art forms, they would go to their attics, they would go to their closets and they would come back with something very roadshow.

>> You're right on point.

Well, and I think of gifts of quilts which is a whole genre in and of itself that no one you don't you put it on a wall, you don't put it on a mattress and you know so many people respond to the quilts in such a positive way and and currently there's a quilt show up of contemporary quilt makers which I think is fabulous in the sense that it shows that the form of the quilt has transcended the generational gap and ended up in the 21st century.

>> We still want to make quilts.

>> Yeah, and some of them were never intended to be covering us in any way.

>> Right.

One of the other great American crafts which has become so decorative in so many ways and for a number of viewers if you say the words Dale truly are you know exactly where we're going next in this conversation.

But the museum's decision consciously to move forward in glass as as an art and expression of art.

>> Take me there.

What's going on?

Well, first a confession, Bruce , to you and to all our viewers tonight is that as a classically trained art historian, Glass was not in our textbooks, not in our lectures.

>> It was considered a craft and that's for another group of people, not for us.

>> So I started with a bias just basically an ignorance of glass in its beauty in any generation whether you're talking to American brilliant glass with its leaded diamond quality or this new thing that happened in the sixties starting with Harvey Lyttleton Glass in the studio as sculpture.

>> However, I went to the Dallas Museum in Traverse City, Michigan and I had a beautiful Howard Ben Tracy show of his glass sculpture and I was blown away and didn't realize it was glass frankly another confession but I saw who had curated the show, looked them up online and called them and said they have a marvelous show.

>> What does it tell me about it?

>> They said Oh it's Glass by Howard Ben Frey.

He's a major glass artist.

He's not really a different style different thing and I thought the light bulb went on.

>> We need to bring glass to Fort Wayne .

>> What would that mean though?

How would you do it?

No one.

>> What would people say no to that the biggest thing we found a way to do it didn't know what people would say and more people attended that first exhibit which was three galleries strong sort of like a circus of glass called the Summer of Glass.

>> More people attended the summer of glass than any other exhibit I've ever done in my life and I thought we're on the right track that led to more exhibits that led to more collecting that led to a collection that now is six hundred pieces strong and moving towards a thousand and that led to us dedicating a new wing of three galleries to glass all the time all the days of the year and also as I understand there are pieces from this collection 200 brilliant cut glass pieces tools and then a sample from that collection is always on display.

>> Yeah, what I thought was very important to go from what you might call the utilitarian glass goblets bowls things that would be on the table but that were meant to be done by artist's hand cut to be gorgeous and then make the transition to maybe they're not functional, maybe they're just great 3-D things in glass that could have been in clay that could have been in bronze, it could have Birnam Wood but they're in glass now and what's the big difference?

>> The big difference is that more than wine shape form you now have light because unlike stone bronze wood marble light comes through glass and moves your soul in a way that you'd never expected before.

>> So Glass really has this unfair advantage over all the sculpture in that it brings light to your eye and delight to your soul.

>> Right.

And it certainly sounds like it is something about which we will hear more as we move into the next one hundred years.

But let's keep the hood open so we can peer in a little more.

>> What are some of the thoughts that you have personally or perhaps the organization has been considering collective in its strategy for looking at the way art and museums interact with community in the coming well starting with the idea of being sensitive to community and their interest and their desires and recognizing in our case the very great response to sculpture and glass we feel like glass for us will grow to the point that we'll be the center for glass sculpture in the Midwest that would be a goal more than Toledo which has a great glass base and was the place where Harvey Littleton got his start.

But of course they were eclipsed by our other collections more than anyone any museum, any exhibiting venue we would be the place at the crossroads of America where you would drive to see the glory of glass in a way that you can't get anyplace else and in part that's tied to something the city's interested in.

>> Thus the community of being more of a tourist attraction for all the people in the Midwest and beyond.

>> I just got off the phone before the show booking a tour from Detroit of forty people coming to Fort Wayne to see Glass and Chicago coming to see glass people who have never been to Fort Wayne before.

>> So we think we're part of the evolution of Fort Wayne as a destination and the museum is a destination for glass of a big thing on the horizon I think.

>> Yeah.

And I think it also seems to play out statement of personal philosophy where apparently that idea of curating for a person who thinks that they don't like art you know the infamous expression I don't know anything about it but I know what I like.

>> That's my person.

Yeah, that's my first person.

That's the person I want to talk to and it may come from the fact I grew up in Bath, Maine, which is a shipyard town with probably only about four thousand people.

>> Nobody knew anything about art but why wouldn't you want to bring them art?

>> When I was at the University of Maine and also I would drive around the state bringing vanderpoel's forgive me of a million dollars art to the people that own the art because it's a state university and say you do not think you like it.

>> Look at this Picasso, Matisse, Henri everybody it's yours.

You own it.

It's a state university and the delight that I had in that as carried over through my whole career and the fact that we could bring that delight to Fort Wayne and then share that with everywhere around thing of beauty for me.

I mean in an art museum the only thing you really want to break or barriers, you know and I would assume that that would be just what you're speaking to is getting over that obstacle that this for somebody else to enjoy.

I may have helped support it but that's really not for me and it's more for me than I may realize.

>> It's exactly right because you know, Bruce , you and I both know that the person who loves art will find the museum in the dark.

OK, but I want to find the person that thinks they don't want to go to a museum.

>> I want to find him.

>> I want to reach out.

I want to touch her shoulder.

I say Hey brother, come on in.

Yeah.

And they will and I'll have a good time.

>> They'll come back just and I like to those that personal connection I think it was David Shapiro's work I think as part of the celebration it was with a share all this work out with folks you gave it to other museums, give it museums all around the country.

>> David was a great printmaker, a great painter and we worked with his widow to make sure that his work did not just get absorbed by the marketplace, anticipated private homes everywhere.

>> Could we have an anchor for him at our museum and could we share it across the country with every museum that doesn't have any David Shapiro work so that his memory would be in an institutional situation in perpetuity and I love doing it.

It's a wonderful journey of discovery for which you don't have to travel far.

In fact you can start by going online for more information about the Fort Wayne Museum of Art Family Dog and that's a new logo every hundred years they get a new logo, a and we're very honored to have Charles Shepard with us, the president and CEO of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art.

>> Charles, thank you so much.

We appreciate it.

Thank you.

Delightful to be here.

And for all of us with prime time thank you for being here as well.

I'm Bruce Haines.

Take care.

We'll see you again next week.

Goodbye