Let US tell you a little (ok, a lot) about CAMi
by Jim Walker and Shauta Marsh
As we near the opening of our 40,000-square-foot expansion in May of 2026, we’re excited to finally share something we’ve been quietly building toward for years: a new identity for our cultural campus — the Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis, or CAMi for short.
CAMi is our 5-acre campus on a single city block in the Garfield Park and Bean Creek neighborhoods just south of Downtown Indianapolis. It includes two historic industrial buildings, one of which we’ve operated as Tube Factory artspace since 2016, along with a sculpture park and 18 affordable homes for artists.
At the heart of the campus is our new CAMi main building, a thoughtful and exciting adaptive reuse project that will soon become a new home for contemporary art, performance, food, sound, and creative enterprise. This moment represents not just growth, but a deepening of who we are at Big Car Collaborative.
About the CAMi main building
This expansion — made possible by the generosity of many supporters — will soon hold six new galleries for commissioned contemporary art exhibitions, including a large, immersive main gallery for ambitious, large-scale installations.
It will also include a performing arts and event space, a culinary arts area with a full commercial kitchen serving an on-site restaurant and bar, studios for artists, storefronts for creative businesses, and two audio recording studios, including the new home for Big Car’s community radio station, 99.1 WQRT FM.
This $7 million renovation transforms a 125-year-old former dairy barn and industrial space into a living, working cultural engine for the city and region. While we have the funds to complete the project, we are still raising an additional $1.7 million to avoid carrying construction debt and to ensure this space remains focused on artists, access, and experimentation. Of note, CAMi will remain free to visit.
Why CAMi, why a museum?
We love museums. They’ve shaped our lives. And in many ways, we’ve already been operating as one. Since 2016, Tube Factory artspace has functioned as a commissioning, non-collecting contemporary art museum. Our model differs from collecting museums and commercial galleries. With our commissioned exhibits, we pay artists to create new work. And they are not required to sell anything.
We work with emerging artists from Indianapolis and around the world, often offering an important step in their careers. This also allows us to stay nimble, flexible, and responsive, offering timely exhibitions that reflect the moment in which we’re living.
The CAMi expansion allows us to go further, offering a deeper museum experience while preserving what makes our approach distinct. Becoming CAMi also supports our long-term sustainability, strengthens civic identity by putting Indianapolis in the name, clarifies what the space is for visitors and artists worldwide, and ensures our work is preserved and archived as part of the city’s cultural story.
Other cities have similar adaptive reuse anchors for this kind of work. Pittsburgh has Mattress Factory. Bentonville has The Momentary. Detroit has MOCAD. Cleveland has SPACES. Indianapolis has CAMi.
CAMi is our Gesamtkunstwerk
Artist-led adaptive reuse is complicated and expensive. But it is also meaningful and responsible. Reusing these buildings preserves embodied history, reduces waste, limits the extraction of new materials, and minimizes the environmental impact of transporting new building supplies across long distances.
Just as importantly, the physical structure of CAMi connects our neighborhood’s industrial and agricultural heritage to the broader, universal conversation of contemporary art. The building itself tells a story, and now it becomes part of a new one.
CAMi is shaped by biophilic design principles that integrate elements of nature into the built environment. You will see this in the natural materials we use, the emphasis on daylight, the inclusion of organic colors and patterns, and the visual and physical connections to the landscape that surrounds the campus. CAMi is designed to be accessible in all ways: intellectually, physically, and spiritually.
Art heals. Art encourages conversation. Art creates connection. And our design for the CAMi structure and projects and programs that happen there are all about accomplishing these vital things.
Frank Lloyd Wright popularized the German word Gesamtkunstwerk, meaning a total work of art. That’s how we approach CAMi. It’s both a home for art and a work of art in itself — where architecture, sound, food, performance, visual art, social space, and everyday life are considered together as one connected, human-centered experience.
Who is behind CAMi?
CAMi is owned and powered by Big Car Collaborative, the nonprofit arts organization we formed in 2004 as a collective of artists dedicated to sparking creativity and improving quality of life through arts approaches.
Big Car owns the entire CAMi campus. We have worked on the near southside of Indianapolis throughout our history and in the Garfield Park neighborhood since 2011. Big Car remains the nonprofit umbrella organization for CAMi and for our other projects and programs, including Spark Placemaking, our public space activation work that happens as a partner on Monument Circle and throughout the city.
Since 2016, Tube Factory artspace has served as a contemporary art mainstay while reimagining what cultural institutions can be. With this expansion, CAMi adds 40,000 square feet of space for art, artists, food, sound, and gathering — all within a historic industrial structure that was built in phases over 75 years. While the project has presented many challenges, we’ve enjoyed teaming up with Blackline Studio on the adaptive reuse and program design approach over the last several years. Indianapolis-based Jungclaus-Campbell is serving as our excellent general contractor on the extensive renovation.
This project has been made possible through extraordinary philanthropic support. Major donors include Lilly Endowment Inc., Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation, Efroymson Family Fund, Herbert Simon Family Foundation, the Katharine B. Sutphin Foundation, Frank and Katrina Basile, the Seybert Family Foundation, Tube Processing, and the Indianapolis Foundation. The project is also supported through the City of Indianapolis’ New Markets Tax Credits program, managed by Indy CDE — paired with support from CICF’s IMPACT Central Indiana with Glick Philanthropies and others listed above.
Additionally, many individuals, companies, and foundations have stepped up to make this possible. And so many folks with our board, campaign committee, and staff have stepped up with so much hard work and dedication. We appreciate you all so much.
CAMi is focused on the future
This support represents a long-term investment in artists and in the cultural life of our city. The CAMi campus isn’t part of a development that may someday change focus based on market forces. Our galleries will remain dedicated to exhibitions, our studios will stay spaces for artists, our homes on the block will continue to be affordable. Our long-term future is under our control.
Indianapolis and Central Indiana already have many truly excellent museums and cultural spaces. Our approach with CAMi is to complement these institutions as we focus on commissioned, multidisciplinary contemporary art.
Our exhibitions are curated and commissioned, and artists are paid directly for producing their work. The expansion deepens our commitment to artists across backgrounds and disciplines while protecting against a familiar pattern in many cities in which artists help reinvigorate neighborhoods only to be priced out once those neighborhoods become more desirable. That will not happen here. CAMi is a long-term civic commons for culture, creativity, and community.
A little CAMi backstory
The building now becoming the CAMi main structure began in the late 1800s as part of Weber Dairy, a culinary space of sorts that evolved over time into a complex owned by Tube Processing Corporation that included multiple buildings on the block. Tube Processing, which moved to another facility in the neighborhood in 2014, donated the big building to us at Big Car in 2021.
Since 2015, Big Car has also restored formerly vacant homes on the block to create 18 affordable artist residences. We joined three large adjacent backyards to form Terri Sisson Park: A Shrine for Motherhood, a restorative outdoor space that features living artworks such as Sam Van Aken’s Tree of 40 Fruit and Juan William Chavez’s Indianapolis Bee Sanctuary. Our pocket sculpture park also includes an amphitheater for performances and The Chicken Chapel of Love, a sacred art project honoring the divine feminine and nature-centered belief systems.
We’ve lived more than 14 years in this neighborhood. Big Car has co-led major quality-of-life planning efforts here and has long offered space for neighborhood gatherings, meetings, and celebrations. This campus is embedded in the everyday life of the Garfield Park and Bean Creek neighborhoods we call home.
From this block, this neighborhood, and this community, CAMi is growing outward — welcoming people from across the city and far beyond it, while staying rooted in the place that shaped it. What we’re building here is both a museum and a shared cultural commons shaped by everyday life, creativity, care, and connection. We hope to see you here soon.