"Two Museums From Indiana" features the work of two third-year studio classes that developed proposals for a Metropolitan Museum of Tango in Argentina and an Indiana Museum of African American History in Indianapolis.

The 80-panel exhibition has spent the month of January at the Museum of Architecture in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The show might visit other galleries in Argentina and South America before returning to campus.

For the participating Ball State students, the project has provided valuable lessons in cultural research, architectural design, museum programming and exhibition development.

"It was very nice for the students because they have to present a portfolio as part of this program," said Ball State visiting professor Ana de Brea, an Argentine architect and journalist. "It's a great experience for them."

The show is visiting Argentina amid a national economic crisis and related turmoil.

"For the architects there, the exhibition was a success," de Brea said. "It was like a party. The people are sad and very worried, and this was a nice thing to share."

The exhibition features the research and design work of 15 architecture majors and four faculty members. It was coordinated by architecture department chair Brian R. Sinclair and curated by de Brea with fellow professors Olon Dotson and Brian Hollars.

"In the last five years, there were 20 to 25 new museums in the world, and we wanted to explore the subject of museum design," de Brea said. "It's very important. It's related to culture and identity, and it's a public space."

De Brea's fall architecture studio designed a tango museum for a site in Buenos Aires, where the tango originated. The
students had to relate the music to architecture and learned about Buenos Aires, museums and the tango, which they danced in the atrium of Ball State's Architecture Building.

Students also watched tango depictions in films ranging from "Scent of a Woman" with Al Pacino and "Last Tango in Paris" with Marlon Brando to "Down Argentine Way" with Betty Grable and "Flying Down to Rio" with Fred Astaire and Dolores Del Rio.

They studied the relationship between the tango and identity, the importance of yards in Argentine architecture and the tango's open-air origins in neighborhoods. Their museum designs include spaces for dancing and movies.

Architecture professors Harry Eggink, Stacy Norman and Elena Singh and landscape architecture professor German Cruz also provided tango museum panels for the Argentina exhibition.

Olon Dotson's third-year architecture studio explored three different sites in Indianapolis for a new Indiana Museum of African American History. The site analysis studies were supported by a $10,000 grant from the Indiana Black Expo, which is developing plans for the museum.

Students' designs for the facility include exhibition areas depicting ancient African civilization, the destruction of African civilization and the Middle Passage, and the African American experience from slavery to contemporary society.

The proposals also contain Indiana Black Expo offices, an auditorium space and a genealogy center, Dotson said. Design elements are intended to reflect African architecture and African contributions to American architecture.

The new museum would tie into the network of museums of African American history across the country, Dotson said.

By Ted Buck, Communications Manager

(NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information on this story, contact Ana de Brea at (765) 285-1905 or adebrea@bsu.edu, or Olon Dotson at (765) 285-3481 or odotson@bsu.edu.)