INDIANAPOLIS, IND.- Starting July 27, explore the renovated Design Gallery inside the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields and discover never-before-seen highlights of the collection.

The Design Gallery in the IMA Galleries is the largest permanent collection gallery devoted to modern and contemporary design of any art museum in the country. Over several months it has undergone a complete thematic update, including a refreshed layout and design, a rotation of more than 150 new objects and new interactive features. It has also been expanded to include an 800-square-foot interactive Design Lab.

In 2014, the IMA received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which provided financial support to create more interpretive and interactive elements and convert a former storage area into a hands-on learning space. After a lengthy innovation process, that storage area has been transformed into a new Design Lab.

The hands-on activity space is the largest addition to the Design Gallery . Inside, visitors can build their own prototypes and design a chair, a lamp or a teapot on a Newfields Lab modeling app. They can try out and evaluate chairs by leading designers like Alessandro Mendini and Philippe Starck. Guests can also sign up for design workshops and classes to produce their own prototypes on 3-D printers right in the Lab.

This installation features Newfields’ first use of virtual reality (VR) with an immersive, interactive tour inside the famed Miller House and Garden in Columbus, Ind. The home was designed between 1953 and 1957 by architect Eero Saarinen, with interiors by Alexander Girard and landscape design by Dan Kiley. The VR tour will transport guests inside the home, where they can explore Girards’ brilliant use of color in the interior of this midcentury masterpiece. The Miller House and Garden is owned and operated by Newfields, and public and private tours can be booked year-round.

More than 150 new objects are on view in the renovated gallery, many of which have never been on display before. The space has now been grouped thematically, divided into sections relating to the design process, such as inspiration, production, technique, materials, form, and function. Guests might also notice the inclusion of familiar objects from other parts of the IMA’s collections. Paintings from the European and contemporary art departments, as well as Native American, African and Japanese pottery and basketry are interspersed with the design collection to complicate and amplify the gallery’s themes.

“Whenever I’m working on an exhibition, I try to curate with empathy,” said Shelley Selim, associate curator of design and decorative arts. “I like to put myself in the visitor’s shoes, and think about not only what information is important for her to learn, but how she might best receive that message. From my years as a student, a teacher and a voracious museum visitor, I’ve noticed that an excellent strategy is to let design tell a story—about the time it was made, who designed it, and especially that object’s journey from idea to final product. Guests understand that works in a museum must be important, but they are sometimes left wondering why they are important. For design—a field that shapes and influences our everyday lives, and is tied closely to technological advancement and material experimentation—so much of this question is intertwined with the designer’s creative process.”

One of the gallery’s themes is materials, and how designers use them in new and innovative ways. Dutch designer Wieki Somers’ High Tea Pot with cover (2003) is one of the many objects on display in this section.

“This is one of my favorite works in our collection,” said Selim. “While its form may seem grotesque—it was modeled from the skull of a wild boar—the materials used to create it add another layer of intrigue. Somers chose to make the teapot from bone china—a type of porcelain containing bone ash that was used in 18th-century fine dining—to call out its historic ties to opulence and make a wry reference to the teapot’s skeletal form. The accompanying cosy appears to be made of mink fur, another material associated with luxury and expense, but is actually created from the pelt of a muskrat, an animal considered an invasive pest in Somers’s native Netherlands.”

The materials theme also features a large touch wall, where guests can touch some of the materials represented in the gallery. This and many other new interactives in the renovated gallery encourage guests to engage with the artworks in new and unexpected ways.