Below are thoughts from Sarah Green, curator of the Ai Weiwei: According to What? exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, open as of April 5. Below Green's quotes are descriptions for all of the art pieces photographed on the scene at the IMA's April 4 media preview. For more on the artist, see this month's Culture Counter preview.

On why the IMA pursued this exhibit: "His work is something I’ve been following since 2003-04, when the Chinese contemporary art became worldly renowned. The IMA is an apt location because we’re an encyclopedic museum. We have art from many different periods and cultures, and we have an amazing Asian collection and a really strong contemporary program."

As to Ai's subject matter in his art: "His work also depicts activism and desire to awknowledge and memorialize the individual, his manifest in China."

About Ai's progress as an artist: "He started with ...

As heralded stage actress Diane Kondrat prepares to bid farewell to Indianapolis and to the theater that has felt like home for 25 years—downtown's Phoenix Theatre—she ruminates about the work she has done here, fills us in on what's next, and explains why theater is such a vital part of the arts. It's all in this IM exclusive (part one of our talk with her appears here).

SHANA NGO: How long have you been planning to leave Indy?

DK: Oh, about two years now.

SN: While you’ve been here, how long have you been doing stage work?

DK: Twenty-five years.

SN: So what kept you here so long, and why the move now?

DK: [laughs] Well, [my husband] Tony Ardizzone has a job teaching literature and fiction writing at Indiana University in Bloomington. He got the job 26 years ago, and we moved to where we could pay the rent—that’s ...

It's Madness, I tell you—Madness!

Butler men's basketball coach Brad Stevens normally patrols the sideline of the court by his bench with a rather calm, collected air about him. But that stoic countenance came off on Saturday night late in his Bulldogs' game against Marquette in the NCAA tournament. Butler ultimately lost the contest 74-72 on a final-second shot, that soon after a goaltending call went against Indy's NCAA-darling team.

Stevens' passionate reaction is now making the rounds online, as it's been applied to various disastrous situations in the history of the world and film culture. If you've ever wondered how Stevens might react to, say, the Hindenburg airship explosion or Mufasa's demise in The Lion King, now's your chance, courtesy of lostlettermen.com.

Elsewhere on the web, The New York Times put it thusly about the Bulldogs' storybook encounters at "the big dance": "Butler can be lethal late in games, ...

Phoenix Theatre’s newest play, The Lyons, is a hilarious show, and Diane Kondrat shines in her final role in Indy.

Nestled in a quiet nook of Mass Ave, the Phoenix creates an unexpected and intimate atmosphere for theatergoers. If you haven’t had the chance to see a show in this eclectic enclave, now is the time to venture out, as one of its veteran thespians, Bloomington resident Diane Kondrat, performs her last role in Indy as Rita in The Lyons.

It’s a wildly hysterical performance considering the heavy topic at hand (more on that below), and Rita Lyons and her husband Ben Lyons (played by the brilliant Charles Goad) had the audience in stitches with nearly every other line. This original play is relatively new, having premiered on Broadway in April 2012. The adaptation is scaled down to accommodate a smaller space, but the entertainment value remains.

For the majority ...

Phoenix Theatre vet and Bloomington resident Diane Kondrat will bid farewell to the Indy theater scene after her role in The Lyons is complete. She recently spoke with IM about why she chose this part as her last before making her next move.

Shana Ngo: So this is your final role in Indy.

Diane Kondrat: I’m really glad that [Phoenix producing director] Bryan Fonseca picked it for me. There aren’t as many roles for women as men in the theater, and there aren’t as many roles for older women as there are for younger women. So I was glad he was able to find something that went along with the Phoenix’s choice to do contemporary work and had a good part for me. I’m also really glad to do an accent, that was the very first accent I ever learned in my life, when I was a little girl in ...