Big Car plans to make Big Tube Indy's contemporary art museum

Big Car Collaborative is about to quadruple its space and expand its reputation as a contemporary art hub.

In June, the nonprofit creative organization announced an adaptive reuse plan for Big Tube, a 40,000-square-foot former industrial building on the south side of its Garfield Park campus. Big Car co-founders Jim Walker and Shauta Marsh have long dreamed of fashioning the structure into a multifaceted art space that would serve its neighbors as well as international visitors.

Now, the nonprofit has the funding to pull together a bevy of artist-serving and community-facing amenities under one roof, including a contemporary art museum with multiple galleries of different sizes, studios, an event space and a kitchen.

Big Tube is part of the larger Tube Factory campus that already is home to Big Car's longtime artspace and coffee shop, artist residences, Chicken Chapel of Love, amphitheater and park. Much of the campus once belonged to the Tube Processing Corporation, a components manufacturer for aerospace and engine industries. In 2021 the company donated the Big Tube building to Big Car.Big Car has spent years sprucing up the grounds and buildings.

"Everybody deserves beauty," Marsh said. "We want people to have access to thoughtful, clean, well-organized space. We believe it makes people feel better emotionally, which affects their physical health."

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The revamped Big Tube is projected to open in 2025, and the public will be able to tour the under-construction building Friday at the opening of the exhibit "Ekvnv (Land), the Sacred Mother from Which We Came," by Tulsa, Oklahoma-based artist Elisa Harkins.

Marsh and Walker are positioning Big Tube, which has more than 10,000 square feet of collective exhibit space under one roof, as the city's contemporary art museum — but not in a traditional sense.

"The institutional things that a lot of times are challenging are where the institution isn't porous; it's walled off from the community. In this case, this one is, by design, permeable," Walker said. "So you can get in and out of here and it's connected with the community. We're not a little fortress over here."

The plan to commission and show, but not collect, contemporary art is born from a gap the duo sees. While Indianapolis is home to a number of robust galleries and art centers that show pieces by working artists, many art lovers have bemoaned shifts in the city's flagship contemporary art museum collections over the past few years.

Indianapolis Contemporary — formerly known as iMOCA — closed in 2020. In 2021, the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields converted its contemporary-art-focused fourth floor into the Lume. Last year, however, the institution opened an exhibit that brought back former fourth-floor favorites, and it has integrated other contemporary pieces throughout the museum in ongoing reinstallations of its permanent collection.

Big Tube can fulfill the city's need for a permanent museum-like space that doesn't rely on sales to show contemporary art, Marsh said. She's been commissioning and curating exhibitions at the Tube Factory artspace since it opened in 2016 and served as executive director of iMOCA for about three years before she left the post in 2015.

Along with curatorial experience, Marsh and Walker are bringing their 20 years of experience running Big Car and building its vision to connect people and art in new ways.

"We're trying to re-envision the role of the arts institution in a community. Institutions aren't well-loved right now, so we're experimenting and we always will be experimenting. That's what contemporary art's about," Marsh said.

More space gives Big Car the ability to show large-scale installations and to keep exhibits up for longer instead of changing them once a month, she said.

The nonprofit creative organization's redevelopment plan for the structure — which comprises a ground floor and upper level — includes:

The building, which is about 125 years old, will also hold plenty of whimsy, courtesy of vintage accents and decades of add-ons during its multiple iterations. Wooden poles on the first floor bear worn spots believed to be from ropes where livestock was tied when the structure was a dairy barn. A tiny, awkward room inside the building will remain as perhaps a mini-museum that explores utopian communities like New Harmony, Marsh said.

To develop Big Tube's design, Walker and Marsh sought inspiration from adaptive reuse creative spaces in the U.S. and abroad, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh and Kraftwerk Berlin.

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The revamped Big Tube will cost about $6.5 million plus about $500,000 for furnishings, Walker said. After fundraising and a grant from the Lilly Endowment, Big Car still needs to raise about $2 million to pay back an Impact Central Indiana bridge loan and start a property maintenance fund.

Find more information at bigcar.org/expansion.

What: "Ekvnv (Land), the Sacred Mother from Which We Came" by artist Elisa Harkins

When: 6 p.m.-10 p.m. Friday exhibit opening. At 7 p.m. and 8 p.m., Big Car staff will lead guided tours through Big Tube. The Harkins exhibit also will be open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.

Where: Tube Factory artspace on the Tube Factory campus, 1125 Cruft St.

Cost: Free. More information at bigcar.org

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Contact IndyStar reporter Domenica Bongiovanni at 317-444-7339 or [email protected]. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter: @domenicareports.