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Exhibit Columbus hosts the "Public By Design" Symposium

One of the sites for Exhibit Columbus's Miller Prize in art, architecture, and design
One of the sites for Exhibit Columbus's Miller Prize in art, architecture, and design

If you’re not from Indiana, and you’ve heard of Columbus - Columbus Indiana, that is – what you’ve probably heard is that it has world-class public art and architecture. That art and architecture isn’t just sitting there. It’s being used and lived in. New spaces and places are still being imagined. And built. One group that’s doing that is the Landmark Columbus Foundation, through its program, Exhibit Columbus.

Exhibit Columbus is a biennial program that brings together designers, architects, artists, community leaders and more to develop temporary art installations across Columbus. Equally important are the conversations that lead up to the art pieces.

The announcement for this year’s theme just came out, and the first public conversation about it – the Exhibit Columbus Symposium - takes place in Columbus October 21 and 22.

I spoke with Richard McCoy, the Executive Director of Landmark Columbus, about the symposium, how they plan to avoid having installations drop in from “Planet Architecture,” and what it means to have nationally recognized art and architecture in a small Midwestern city.

Listen to the conversation above. You can find more information about Exhibit Columbus at their website.

Alex Chambers runs WFIU’s arts desk, and produces and hosts WFIU’s Inner States, a weekly podcast and radio show about arts, culture, and ideas from southern Indiana and beyond. He’s the co-creator of How to Survive the Future, a podcast about the present, produced in partnership with Indiana Humanities. He has a PhD in American Studies, with a dissertation called Climate Violence and the Poetics of Refuge, and a book of poems called Bindings: A Preparation, about domestic life and empire. In his spare time, he teaches audio storytelling at the IU Media School. When he’s not in the woods gathering sound, you might see him out for a run on the streets of Bloomington.