THIS JUST IN: Ann will continue swiveling those electronic hips

Ann Dancing will be back in action soon, although timeline has not yet been announced.

The four-week campaign to raise enough money to upgrade and keep Ann Dancing on the Indianapolis Cultural Trail has succeeded.

Indianapolis Cultural Trail executive director Kären Haley announced today that the crowd-funding portion of the Keep Ann Dancing campaign has raised nearly $200,000 from almost 1,200 individual donors from 32 states. Individual donations ranged from $5 to $2,500, while 20 corporations contributed to the effort.

This amount allows Indianapolis Cultural Trail, Inc., the non-profit organization responsible for the Cultural Trail, to replace Ann Dancing by Julian Opie with new technology and hardware and establish an Ann Dancing maintenance fund which will keep Ann Dancing on the Cultural Trail for years to come.

The posted fund-raising goal was $262,800, but some of that total represents longer-term maintenance and public art investments, beyond the restoration of Ann Dancing, which was installed over 10 years ago, but never intended for long-term survival.

“Indianapolis Cultural Trail, Inc, is a small but mighty team,” Haley said.  “We stayed true to the founding principles of the Cultural Trail with the Keep Ann Dancing campaign. We dared people to think bigger about what is possible for Indianapolis, using high-quality art and design to push residents to stretch beyond what we’ve come to expect in our public spaces while thinking about the long-term sustainability and maintenance of the public investment from the beginning. Thank you, Indianapolis, for helping us Keep Ann Dancing.”

A timeline for replacing the public art known as Ann Dancing will be announced in the coming weeks. Donations have continued to come in since the crowd funding campaign ended on June 29.  The Indianapolis Cultural Trail continues to fundraise and accept donations to fulfill the total campaign goal which includes funding for future high quality and engaging art on the Indianapolis Cultural Trail and enhancements to and maintenance for Ann Dancing’s plaza on the Trail.