February 2013

Voices from the Prairie A publication of Humanities Iowa • Winter 2013

David Plowden’s Iowa The Great Balthazar T. Archimedes

UI Digital Studio for Public Humanities Salisbury House & Gardens

Voices from the Prairie Winter 2013

Voices from the Prairie Contents

Humanities Iowa Board of Directors & Staff

Humanities Iowa Mission Statement

3 David Plowden’s Iowa

president

The mission of Humanities Iowa is to promote understanding and appreciation of the people, communities, cultures and stories of importance to Iowa and the nation.

4 Jon Winet, Director of the University of Iowa Digital Studio for Public Humanities

Barb O’Hea, Peosta

vice-president

Sue Cosner, Panora

7 Richard L. Poole—a.k.a. The Great Balthazar T. Archimedes

secretary

9 J. Eric Smith, Director of the Salisbury House & Gardens

treasurer

13 Grants Awarded in 2012

directors

14 Statement of Activity 14 New Humanities Iowa Board Member 15 2012 Donors

cover: Templeton, Iowa. Photograph by David Plowden, 2008.

Follow Humanities Iowa like never before!

Rosemarie Ward, Des Moines

Jeff Heland, Burlington

George Barlow, Grinnell Graciela Caneiro-Livingston, Dubuque Tom Dean, Iowa City Mark Felderman, Chariton Kate Gronstal, Council Bluffs Kenneth Lyftgot, Cedar Falls Cindy McLaughlin, Sioux City Sam Mulgrew, Peosta Sally Phelps, Spencer Richard Ramsay, Spirit Lake Marina Sandquist, Johnston Linda Shenk, Ames Dorothy Simpson-Taylor, Waterloo Steve Siegel, Ottumwa

executive director Get Tweets on events and news @ twitter.com/humanitiesiowa View our Facebook page @ www.facebook.com/humanitiesiowa Check out our Prairie Lights book partnership and other hi events on YouTube @ www.youtube.come/humanitiesiowa.org Find news and information on speakers, library programs, and ways to get involved with Humanities Iowa on our website @ www.humanitiesiowa.org 2 · Voices from the Prairie

Christopher R. Rossi: c-rossi@uiowa.edu

grants & administration officer

Tim Johnson: tim-johnson@uiowa.edu

fiscal & development officer

Heather Plucar: heather-plucar@uiowa.edu

designer & editorial assistant David Herwaldt: david.herwaldt@ wartburg.edu

Humanities Iowa is a nonprofit organization funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Join other Iowans and support Humanities Iowa. Donations are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. Humanities Iowa also accepts gifts of stock or securities.

To make a donation or receive more information please contact our office at 319-335-4153 or info@humanitiesiowa.org.

Voices from the Prairie Voices from the Prairie is published two times a year and distributed to the friends of Humanities Iowa and interested Iowans.

To subscribe please contact us: Humanities Iowa 100 lib rm 4039 Iowa City, Iowa 52242-1420 phone: (319) 335-4153 fax: (319) 335-4154 email: humanities-iowa@uiowa.edu

David Plowden’s Iowa Book, Exhibition, & Website

In five decades of photography,

the well-known documentarian David Plowden has photographed in many places across these United States, but Iowa is the place where he has photographed most. He first came here in 1983 to photograph corn for Smithsonian. The following year he returned to teach at the University of Iowa.

As Plowden said recently: “… all through the years of my teaching, I was continuing, continuing, continuing to photograph Iowa. I think I have more photographs of Iowa than any place. Quite seriously.”

To celebrate Plowden’s love affair with a state the quiet beauty of which is often ignored by photographers of lesser acuity, Humanities Iowa assembled a 64-print exhibition of his work and sent it out on a six-venue tour across the state. A book produced by Humanities Iowa and a website designed by the University of Iowa Digital Studio for Public Humanities accompany the show.

Voices from the Prairie recently talked with Jon Winet, the dsph Director, about the plans of the recently-founded studio to use digital technology to stimulate and communicate humanities research.

top: Bedroom with Fan, Hotel Brooklyn,

Brooklyn. Photograph by David Plowden, 1987.

middle: The cover of David Plowden’s Iowa with the picture Sherman Township, Calhoun County and Coneys ‘N’ More Cafe, Fort Dodge. Photographs by David Plowden, 2004. bottom: Screenshot from the website— http://dsph.uiowa.edu/humanitiesiowa/ dplowden/wp/—displaying links to conversation with David Plowden about his experiences photographing Iowa.

Winter 2013 · 3

this page: Door Van’s Clothing; Victor,

Iowa. Photograph by David Plowden, 1986.

opposite page: Screenshots from aids Quilt Touch, a mobile web app developed by dsph for the names Project aids Memorial Quilt.

Humanities Iowa: You were recently appointed as director of the Digital Studio for Public Humanities (dsph). What does the studio do?

Jon Winet: dsph launched in August 2011. Our name captures much of our mission. The statement on our Twitter site reads:

@uidsph The University of Iowa Digital Studio for Public Humanities — dsph — encourages and supports public digital humanities research, scholarship and learning.

As you might guess, we are excited about the possibilities, and in our first year we’ve had a chance to work in collaboration with some great people on a range of projects.

HI: dsph recently collaborated with Humanities Iowa on David Plowden’s Iowa.

Can you talk a little bit about your role in that project?

JW: In my very first week on the job, I visited with Chris Rossi, Humanities Iowa Director in the hope we could develop some collaborative activity.

Chris showed me some stunning black and white photographs of Iowa by David Plowden, and shared plans for a catalog project to accompany a traveling exhibition. As part of dsph ’s commitment to the “mobilization” of the digital humanities — making research available on smart phones and tablets — we developed a project that resulted in an ‘on paper’ catalog, designed by Wartburg professor David Herwaldt, co-produced by dsph and Humanities Iowa, as well as an adaptive design web site — one which looks good on all devices.

4 · Voices from the Prairie

For the project, we invite viewer contributions. Upon viewing Mr. Plowden’s 1986 “Door, Van’s Clothing, Victor, Iowa” (seen above) Donna Coats Friedman posted the following comment: “My dear grandfather used to buy all his overalls and cambric shirts at Van’s.”

As part of the online catalog, dsph conducted an interview with Mr. Plowden, excerpts of which can be viewed online.

As a documentary photographer, Plowden says that he works to stay “one step ahead of the wrecking ball.” As a digital humanities researcher, do you feel an urgency to preserve the past before it disappears?

JW: It’s actually more the sense of opportunity than urgency that I feel.

Developments in technology have added to the archivist’s toolbox. Both the University of Iowa Libraries and the School of Library of Information Science have a fierce dedication to archives. It’s an honor and a pleasure to be working with them.

HI:

HI: Can you share with us some of the projects you’re working on currently?

JW: One of our goals this year has been to identify public digital humanities projects in Iowa. To that end, we’re now working on an online resource, “dh@Iowa.” In the process, we’ve connected with scholars and researchers across the campus and state. dsph researcher Nikki Dudley, a 2010 UIowa School of Library and Information Science alumna, is leading this effort.

On the national stage, we’re working with the names aids Memorial Quilt Project and Professor Anne Balsamo and Researcher Dale MacDonald at the New School in New York to create a mobile web app. aids Quilt Touch allowed visitors to locate the panel of a loved one at the Washington, d.c. display of the Quilt on the National Mall during the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and xix International aids Conference. The app also allows people to leave remembrances.

Long term, the robust database and user-friendly interface we’re working on will create a compelling access point to this extraordinary cultural treasure.

Closer to home, we’re supporting a range of projects through a dsph grants

program. Funded projects include “The People’s Weather Map,” produced by an interdisciplinary team that will create an interactive, digital map of Iowa designed to provide information on extreme weather events. “Digital Johnson County,” led by history professor Colin Gordon will be an historical online atlas of Johnson County; professor Robert Cargill’s “Digi-Tel Azekah” will reconstruct an archaeological site in Israel by creating a 3d, real-time, virtual reality model.

The notion of an accessible platform is a common thread in much of dsph research, one that encourages active participation, and the opportunity for citizen researchers to contribute to the scholarship. We think these projects are exemplary.

We’ve got a wide range of projects in the works this year. Among many, we worked with the UI Obermann Center on a fall 2012 symposium, “The Latino Midwest” and with Public Space One on their cutting-edge “Works In Progress Conference.” Up ahead and ongoing, we’re collaborating on an online literary journal for the new UIowa Spanish

Creative Writing mfa Program, and with the Dubuque International Film Festival.

We’ve also launched “pdh4l” (Public Digital Humanities for Lunch), a bi-weekly series of informal public talks.

As you can tell, dsph is very much a work in progress, with plenty of inaugural projects underway. We look forward to the collaborations ahead.

HI: Looking ahead, what sort of impact do you think digital technology will have on the humanities in the next ten years?

Twenty years?

JW: Hmmm … Some say forecasting the future is a folly. Then again, there’s technologist Alan Kay’s famous/infamous quote, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”—uttered at a 1971 meeting at Xerox’s legendary think tank, the Palo Alto Research Center (parc) where I was fortunate to spend much of the ’90s as an artist in residence.

So at the risk of folly: it seems clear that technology will transform academic research and scholarship immeasurably in the years ahead. In fact it’s likely the term

digital humanities will seem quaint in the future, much in the way that photography now refers to the once designated digital photography.

At dsph, we hope that the impact will be to create greater access to humanities research, with increased participation by scholars and the general public alike.

In this way, we hope to champion the public dimension of humanities research and with it, a further democratization of knowledge.

Thinking back twenty years to 1992, when the World Wide Web was just beginning to take hold of our collective imagination, we can anticipate the development of many new tools and approaches that will transform the humanities — and the very nature of everyday life and consciousness — between now and 2032.

This of course applies equally to the arts, and we have already seen new media — video, internet-based creative production, sound design, and electronically mediated immersive environments — take their place side Winter 2013 · 5

above: Farm Buildings Cedar County

North Of West Liberty, Iowa. Photograph

by David Plowden, 1987.

below: October 3, 2012 Presidential

Debate Watch Party. Johnson County Republican Party Headquarters, Coralville, Iowa. Photograph by Jon Winet.

by side with painting and sculpture in art schools and museums. I believe there is a bright future for traditional arts and humanities and emerging practices, and the rich dialog between arts and humanities will continue on, hopefully with even more vigor and dynamism.

HI: Can you talk a bit about your work as a new media artist?

JW: Since the early nineties, I’ve been fascinated by the developments at the intersections of art and technology and the potential for new approaches to creativity to have a positive effect on society. I see my involvement in dsph as very much consistent with this view.

As a photographer, I’ve long focused my lenses and creative work on the theatrical spectacle of U.S. electoral politics, most notably the national Democratic and Republican Party national conventions.

Each quadrennial cycle affords a chance to work with new technologies and media platforms. In 2008 YouTube became a highly effective means for the display of video. Working with New York-based cultural critic and arts writer David Levi Strauss, Aperture Magazine’s online website provided a venue for photography and commentary. That year Steve Lambert’s “Add-art” also exhibited my work on Foxfire web browsers in the banner spaces that usually feature advertisements.

Going back to the early days of the web, I co-directed “General Hospital”[1993-1997], a primarily webbased project on mental health and mental health care delivery systems. The project explored the then largely speculative potential of the web as a source for public information. The research now seems naïve, given the meteoric ascendancy of the web

6 · Voices from the Prairie

and networked communications in the intervening years.

HI: At the end of the day, when it’s time to relax, do you go for traditional paper-andprint book or the e-reader?

JW: I live with a bibliophile, and books are very much part of my environment. And while I’m pretty sure electronic tablets [e.g. iPad, Kindle Fire, Nook, Galaxy] will substantially replace “books on paper” and magazines, books and reading will remain essential parts of the human experience.

Ultimately, it’s the life-affirming character

of creativity and scholarship that lead us to engage in the arts and humanities.

Note:

You can learn about additional

dsph projects and activities by visiting their website — http://dsph.uiowa.edu.

THE GREAT

DR. BALTHAZAR T. ARCHIMEDES IOWA’S NEWEST MEDICINE MAN Richard L. Poole was born and raised in Detroit, Mich. Since 1978, he has lived in Sioux City, Iowa, where he directs the theatre department at Briar Cliff University. A senior Fulbright scholar, Richard has taught on the college and university level for 44 years.

He has authored numerous essays on theatre in the rural Midwest. With Dr. George Glenne, he co-authored The Opera Houses of Iowa, (Iowa State University Press, 1993). His most recent essay is History, Archive, Memory and Performance: The Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Play as Cultural Commemoration in Enacting History (University of Alabama Press, 2011).

How does someone from Detroit, Michigan, a big city kid with a father who was a symphony conductor, become a medicine man in Sioux City, Iowa?

Richard Poole: Seems like a long journey, doesn’t it? My mother was an actress in the ’20s in Detroit and I always wanted to be on stage. My family thought I had talent. I did school plays and when it came time for college, I picked theatre as my major.

Before I became a teacher, I did a lot of acting. I was a member of the California Shakespeare Festival where I acted with David Ogden Stiers and Kurtwood Smith.

I made commercials, did dinner theatre and took just about any gig I could get.

When reality struck, I got into teaching.

Of course, teaching is a type of acting, so there was a natural progression from acting to teaching acting, directing, and playwriting. Then came the medicine show, an extremely popular theatre form in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Humanities Iowa:

HI:

When did you learn of medicine shows?

RL: About 35 years ago, I was in Georgetown in the District of Columbia visiting my brother. I walked into a usedbook store and came across Step Right Up: An Illustrated History of the American Medicine Show by Brooks McNamara. I couldn’t put it down. I was fascinated.

I taught American theatre history so I knew something about medicine shows, but I had no idea how popular and prolific they were. General histories of American Theatre devote a paragraph, if that much, to this performance type. Yet it affected Americans for almost one hundred years.

So I learned as much as I could about it.

HI: So now you had all this fascinating information. What did you do with it?

RP: I wanted to put together a show. I had McNamara’s book and other sources, but I wanted to create a character that was my very own. A few years after I had read McNamara’s book, I joined an organization in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa: The National Association of Tent, Repertoire and Folk Theatre. This wonderful organization has all types of information about small-town opera houses, traveling tent shows, and medicine shows. I felt sure that I could find someone who had been a medicine man or who had traveled with a medicine show. I was right!

I met this old guy — his name escapes me now. He had been a medicine man and I told him of my aspirations. He asked what I called myself and I said “Dr. Balthazar T. Archimedes.” I thought it was a classy name, kind of foreign, Greek and exotic. But as soon as I got the words out of my mouth, he stopped me.

“Son,” he said. “You can’t just be plain Dr. Balthazar T. Archimedes. You have to be the great dr. balthazar t.

Winter 2013 · 7

left: The Endless Search by Louis

Dalrymple, 1901 (from the collection of the Library of Congress). Ponce de Leon’s ghost laughs as an old man reaches vainly for a winged bottle of a supposed youthrestorer — Glycero-Phosphate of Sodium.

in order to mount a full season we depend on students from other majors. Besides, as a liberal arts university, we provide every student, regardless of his or her major, opportunities to become involved in what I consider the perfect and all-inclusive art.

So I created a show — a variety show.

We used original medicine show scripts and bits and pieces from vaudeville and burlesque — popular entertainments. The frame of the show is the 19th century, but it can move forward or backward in time to accommodate whatever entertainments we collectively create.

One last question. What can Collegium Rupis Spinozae do for me?

RP: Ha! I’m glad you asked. If you remember your Latin, it roughly translates as Briar Cliff College. Now that we are a university, my elixir is called Universitatis Rupis Spinozae. Ingesting it, the spirit and power of Briar Cliff University infuses your body and you will be cured of all pains.

You know, toward the end of the pitch, I offer one drop “free of charge to anyone in the audience who is sore afflicted. And I can see, ladies and gentlemen, that many are sore afflicted. Who will be the first?

Who will step up and ingest the miracle, magic elixir, Universitatis Rupis Spinozae?

Step Up, Step Up, do not be shy!”

At that moment, when I look into their eyes and see their expressions, I know I’ve got them! I could sell them anything!

HI:

archimedes!” His gravelly voice

boomed over the second floor of the organization’s museum and the great doctor was born. The name appealed to my ego and my sense of the theatrical!

What kind of show did you develop?

American Medicine shows varied from one-person outfits to entire production companies with many performers and even animal acts. Medicine men were actually theatrical entrepreneurs.

At some point during the entertainment, they pitched their medicines, soaps or salves. Since initially I was by myself I created a show that I could perform and control: the Great Doctor sold hope, cures and a special kind of medicine. Eventually, I needed to include other performers.

HI:

RP:

small town outside of Sioux City. Someone heard about it and I was asked to perform for Sioux City’s annual River-Cade festival. So I got together a group of people, students mostly, and pitched an elixir “guaranteed” to cure whatever ailed you. It was called Collegium Rupis Spinozae. It was pretty successful.

We performed in a tent on the RiverCade grounds and afterward a woman came up and asked if I thought my potion would help her brother, who was very sick with a variety of diseases. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was merely an actor and this was just a show for entertainment purposes only. I said “All we can do is pray, sister.” And we did.

How else have you used your creation?

I wanted to include my students.

Briar Cliff University, where I teach, has a small theatre department— two full-time faculty plus adjuncts. Depending on the year, we have from five to fifteen majors, so HI:

RP:

Where did you first perform your show and who were the other people in it?

RP: Well, I did a one-man show as Dr. Balthazar for an arts organization in a HI:

8 · Voices from the Prairie

Salisbury House & Gardens Des Moines, Iowa

You’re new to Salisbury House & Gardens, so tell us a little bit about how you ended up as Executive Director of the Salisbury House Foundation.

J. Eric Smith: I’m a recent transplant to Des Moines, coming here as a “trailing spouse” when my wife took a position that moved us closer to her home state of Minnesota. I’m originally from the Low Country of South Carolina, but I’ve spent the past 18 years in Upstate New York.

I’ve got about 27 years worth of experience in the government, nonprofit, and higher education sectors, most recently at the University at Albany, so I’m grateful that the Salisbury House Foundation Board of Directors saw my skill set as relevant to its needs. I have also been a freelance writer for years, for a variety of print outlets, and have had a strong online presence since I put my first website up in 1993, and started my first blog in 2000. I’m still running a few websites on the side, including Indie Moines (indiemoines.com), which is mostly about our lives in Des Moines and around Iowa.

Humanities Iowa:

So how do you like Des Moines and Iowa so far?

JES: I love them both. As state capitals go, Des Moines is a bit livelier than Albany was, and my wife, daughter and I have had a great time exploring the city’s cultural attractions, while also trying to eat our way through the Register’s 100 Best Restaurants list. During the first couple of months that I was here, I took advantage of some down-time and the amazingly mild winter to follow in the footsteps of some of our elected officials and caucus candidates by visiting all 99 of Iowa’s counties. I finished the complete set with Benton County in early March, and just adored getting to see HI:

the state and so many of its cities and towns that way.

What should folks know about Salisbury House & Gardens?

JES: Salisbury House is an amazing historic property located in the middle of a residential neighborhood in Des Moines. Carl Weeks — who built the house in the 1920s with his wife, Edith — was a chemist and pharmacist who created an international cosmetics empire based in Iowa. Carl was also instrumental in the establishment of the Pharmacy School at Drake University, and Weeks Hall there is named in his honor. He’s a very important figure in the business and cultural history of Des Moines.

Carl and Edith modeled their home after King’s House in Salisbury, England, and it was something of a pioneering recycling and reclamation project, as it was built with many features from abandoned or demolished homes, roads, barns, shipping crates, out-buildings and who knows what else. The Weekses also were diligent in preserving the native oaks on their grounds, and our property constitutes one of the largest parcels of mature woodlands within the City of Des Moines today.

Carl and Edith were also avid and skilled collectors of books, art, historic documents, musical instruments, and decorative items, and most of what they amassed during their 30-odd years in the house remains here. It’s pretty amazing how well the whole estate holds together to this day, and I feel that’s because Carl and Edith really embraced culture over ostentation, and creativity over opulence for its own sake.

HI:

Winter 2013 · 9

What’s your favorite thing about Salisbury House?

JES: As powerful as the architecture and the art are here, as a writer, I’m really drawn to our library most strongly. I’ve seen and held things here that are truly world-class and important, and I would like to see us tell this part of our story more widely.

The books and documents that Carl and Edith collected provide a rich repository for the study of world culture, and I think the library demonstrates their commitment to promoting and empowering a literate, engaged citizenry.

Just listing names off the top of my head, we have signed books and documents by the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Charles Dickens, Queen Elizabeth I, King Ferdinand of Aragon, Joseph Smith, D.H. Lawrence and many others of similar stature.

Carl and Edith also collected holy books from a wide range of spiritual traditions.

We have an original edition of the Book of Mormon, numerous Bibles, including a folio from an original Gutenberg pressing, an 18th Century Qu’ran, hand printed and two illuminated pre-printingpress Catholic Books of Hours, among others. Carl was fascinated with Native American culture in both North and South America, and we have many works about the histories, traditions and beliefs of America’s indigenous people, including an 1844 edition of George Catlin’s Catlin’s North American Indian Portfolio.

Our James Joyce materials resonate most deeply with me, since I love his creative vision and the magic of his language, inscrutable as it may be. We have reached out to several Joyce scholars, HI:

10 · Voices from the Prairie

and they share my sense that we have something special here. We’re planning a Bloomsday event in June 2013, to celebrate Leopold Bloom’s passage through Dublin on June 16, 1904, which Joyce documented in epic form in his novel, Ulysses.

We actually have a limited edition of Ulysses with illustrations by Henri Matisse, in fact, who couldn’t be bothered to read Joyce’s text, but illustrated it instead with engravings inspired by Homer’s Odyssey.

It makes Leopold Bloom’s epic day all

above: from Catlin’s North American Indian Portfolio: Buffalo Hunt, under the white wolf skin and Buffalo Hunt, Chase —chromolithographs by George Catlin, 1844.

previous page: Salisbury House

entrance and a portrait of the Weeks family, ca. 1921.

the more magical to see it illustrated with images from Greek mythology!

How about the art collection?

JES: We have works from a variety of eras and traditions — from Asia, Oceania, Europe, the Americas and Africa — so it’s always interesting to see how these pieces share space together. In our Great Hall, just to cite one room’s worth of examples, we have a Brussels Brabant tapestry dating from the mid-16th century hanging on our west wall, directly across from a huge portrait of two young boys, The Brothers Labochere, painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1809. To the north, we have a striking Lawrence Alma-Tadema portrait called The Chamberlain of Sisostris from his Egyptian period, which hangs above a bronze bust of Rodin — not by Rodin — which was cast by Antoine Bourdelle. If you look to the right into the Common Room while standing in front of the Alma-Tadema, you meet the baleful gaze of Cardinal Rivarola, painted

by Anthony Van Dyck, court painter of England’s Charles the First. On the south wall are two large Italian alabaster urns from the late 1700s, which Carl had electrified in the 1920s, so they glow from within when they are lit. All of these items sit beneath an oak-beamed ceiling that was salvaged from the 16th Century White Hart Inn in Salisbury, where Shakespeare is believed to have watched his own plays being performed.

While you can’t see it there today, Carl and Edith once had an important 20th Century work in the Great Hall called Birth of Venus which was modernist Joseph Stella’s reinterpretation of Botticelli’s famed painting for the cosmetics and nylons age. They kept the florid, sensual HI:

Venus behind a silk curtain, for maximum dramatic impact when it was unveiled for guests. We still own the painting, along with another Stella called The Apotheosis of the Rose, which hangs in the Breakfast Room, where Edith’s influence was very strong, we believe. Venus has been on tour and is currently in Cleveland. She will be coming home this winter and will be back on display in February. We plan to restore her to her place of glory.

top left: The Brothers Labochere

by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1809.

top right: Cardinal Rivarola

by Anthony Van Dyck, 1624.

bottom: Salisbury House Common Room.

Winter 2013 · 11

How did the House and its collections come to be a public attraction?

JES: In the 1930s, Carl and Edith fell upon difficult financial times, and brokered an agreement with Drake University to donate the House and grounds to the college to support its art programs. Carl and Edith kept all of the house’s contents and lived in the house as tenants until the early 1950s, when Edith’s health began to fail, and maintenance costs on the house became prohibitive. At that point, Drake and the Weekses jointly sold the house and all of its collections to the Iowa State Education Association, who opened portions of the house to the public, while using other portions for their offices. isea held the house until 1998, when the Salisbury House Foundation acquired it for the express purpose of restoring it and operating it as a museum. So we’re in an interesting position today, as we’ve been a public attraction for over 50 years, even though we’re actually a very young museum. We’re working hard to provide an increased degree of academic and curatorial rigor in our research here, to correct or confirm some of the apocryphal stories that have evolved about the house and its builders over the past half-century.

It’s exciting work, and I’m glad to have the chance to do my small part to turn Salisbury House into the world-class museum that I know it can and should be.

HI:

above: Birth of Venus, Joseph Stella, 1922.

12 · Voices from the Prairie

Grants Awarded 2012

ames

dubuque

sioux cit y

Iowa State University — $2,605

Clarke University — $2,500

Western Iowa Tech Community College — $1,000

bar aboo

( wi )

Aldo Leopold Foundation — $8,600 calmar

Northeast Iowa Community College — $1,135 ce dar r apids

African American Museum of Iowa — $5,000 chariton

City of Chariton — $800 Chariton Chamber & Development Corporation — $150 clinton

YWCA Clinton — $2,500 cor alville

Sudanese American Community Services — $300 corning

French Icarian Colony Foundation — $500 des moines

Des Moines Public Library — $5,000 Friends of Des Moines Parks — $15,000 Community Legacy Matters, Inc. — $10,000 Drake University — $6,000

Dubuque Initiatives — $5,000 Dubuque County Fine Arts Society — $3,000 Dubuque Museum of Art — $500.00 dye rsville

James Kennedy Public Library — $500 e ldon

American Gothic House Center — $1,560 e lk horn

Danish Immigrant Museum — $5,000 fairfie ld

Society of Fairfield Italian Americans — $1,500 grimes

cultureall — $5,000 milford

spe nce r

Spencer Public Library — $720.00 te mpleton

Templeton Documentary Project — $10,000 wate rloo / ce dar falls

University of Northern Iowa — $5,000 west br anch

Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association — $5,000 whiting

Whiting Public Library — $1,400.00 winte rset

Madison County Historical Society — $500.00

Friends of the Lakeside Lab, Inc. — $446.00 pe ll a

Central College — $1,800 quad cities

CommUniversity, Inc. — $2,000 Figge Art Museum — $5,000 Iowa Route 6 Tourist Association — $9,684 Mississippi Valley Blues Society — $1,000

Repertory Theatre of Iowa — $1,000 Salisbury House Foundation — $5,000

Winter 2013 · 13

Statement of Activity for the year ended October 31, 2011

New Board Member: Cindy McLaughlin

re ve nues ge ne r al fund trust fund

Cindy McLaughlin, community volunteer, has been elected to the board of NEH & private grants 663,940 0 663,940 Humanities Iowa, the state affiliate to the Program income 64,471 0 64,471 National Endowment for the Humanities.

Gifts & membership 18,794 0 18,794 She was elected at the June board meeting Dividends & interest 35 10,423 10,457 of Humanities Iowa in Washington, Iowa.

Realized & unrealized gain McLaughlin is a resident of Sioux City on investments 0 (4,119) (4,119) and grew up in Marshall, mn. During her Miscellaneous income college years in Minnesota, she worked (Permanently Restricted) 128,000 128,000 in the hospitality and retail industries.

Total Revenues 875,240 6,304 881,543 She was a women’s wear buyer in Sioux Falls, s. d. and in Minneapolis and then relocated to Sioux City in 1986 to open her functional e xpe nses own retail clothing business.

Grants 483,595 0 483,595 She has served on several local boards Council conducted projects 68,584 0 68,584 including the Siouxland Humane Society Management & general 156,572 0 156,572 and Girls Inc. During her years of service Fundraising, newsletter 16,798 0 16,798 with these organizations, she was involved with two major capital campaigns to build Total Functional Expenses 725,549 0 725,549 new facilities. She has also served on the

board of Planned Parenthood and was an active member of the Junior League Increase in Net Assets for the Year 149,691 6,304 155,994 of Sioux City. Currently, she serves on Net Assets—Beginning of Year 516,336 the board of kwit/koji public radio Net Assets—End of Year 672,330 station. She has also volunteered for events sponsored by the Sioux City Art Center.

In 2010, McLaughlin sold her business and focused on creating a multi-purpose building in the Fourth Street Historic District of downtown Sioux City. For Humanities Iowa distributed $552,181 in the past 16 years, she has been a member grant and program funds during its 2011 of American Girls, a non-fiction study fiscal year. Grant recipients contributed club founded in 1900. McLaughlin and $2,039,903 in cost-sharing funds during her husband, Dwight Packard, live on an the same period. acreage on the north side of Sioux City.

Grants 483,595

Council conducted projects 68,586 Fundraising 1% Cost sharing 2,039,903 Grants 17% Program services 173,370 Council-Conducted Projects 3% Management, general, & depreciation 156,572 Cost Sharing 73% Fundraising 18,794 Management, general, & depreciation 6%

14 · Voices from the Prairie

total

Donors 2012

Nancy Adams-Cogan Algona Good Samaritan Society Tamara Andrews Audubon County Tourism Lawrence Basile V.M. Bauer Susan Berger William Blackburn Tom & Liz Boyd Willard (Bill) Boyd III Willard (Sandy) & Susan Boyd Robert & Mary Enzler Breitfelder Margaret Brennan Martha Bruckner Richard Burton Graciela Caneiro-Livingston Richard Carlson Harry & Jeannette Carter Hal & Avril Chase Priscilla Coffman Sue Cosner Kathryne Cutler Elizabeth Debrower Frances DeJong J.P. Dietrich dne Caplan Family Foundation M. Burton Drexler Barb & Ron Eckhoff Barbara Eckstein Stacy Elliott Susan Enzle & Nathan Savin Mark Felderman William Friedricks Norman Freund Elizabeth Garst Carol Gilbertson Helen Goldstein Kate Gronstal William Hamm Janell & Wayne Hansen James P. Hayes Richard Herrnstadt

John & Jan Hess Beverly Hinds Dr. Julie Husband Sidney & Elizabeth Huttner Yusra Igram Lee & Nancy Jarvis John Menninger D.E. & S.M. Johnson Tim Johnson Laura Julier Martin & Maryann Kelly Kevin Koch Maurice Lee Randall Lengeling Thea Levon Leslie Michael Lewis-Beck Lois Lindaman Sherry & Henry Lippert Helen Lockwood Marcia & Cedric Lofdahl Alma Long Tom Lynner Esther Mackintosh Marsha Hucke Helen & Henry Moyer Katherine & John Moyers Samuel F. Mulgrew Peter Nazareth Neil Nakadate Roger Natte Harland Nelson Mary Noble Carrie Z. Norton Barb O’Hea Armond & Polly Pagliai Dale Patrick Shirley Pfeifer David Plath Elizabeth Turner Platt Chris & Heather Plucar Alta Price Steven Price

Walter Pyper Richard Ramsay Emily G. Reed Treva Reimer Larry Render Mark & Janet Rosenbury Chris Rossi Roswell & Elizabeth Garst Foundation Gerard & Carolyn Rushton Robert & Anna Mae Schnucker Linda Shenk William Sherman Nancy Shively William R. Shuttleworth Steve Siegel Cynthia Smith Pat Smith Eldon & Mary Snyder Mike Speight Larry Stone John & Susan Strauss Dr. Richard Thomas Judith Thoreson Fiona Valentine Rhoda Vernon Vicki & Brian Walshire Rosemarie Ward Sam Weigel William & Madeline Windauer Janet Winslow Margy Wood Zora Zimmerman David Zwanzinger

Winter 2013 · 15

NONPROFIT ORG. US POSTAGE PAID MSI

Humanities Iowa 125 West Washington Street Iowa City, Iowa 52242-1420

Become a member today! www.humanities.org

Dubuque Museum of Art December 9, 2011 – March 25, 2012 Figge Art Museum, Davenport May 12, 2012 – August 26, 2012 The Sioux City Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center / Betty Strong Encounter Center September 23, 2012 – January 13, 2013

David Plowden’s Iowa continues its multi-year tour of our state Iowa History Center at Simpson College, Indianola February 1, 2013 – May 31, 2013 University of Iowa Pentacrest Museums, Iowa City Summer 2013 (exact date tbd) Blanden Memorial Art Museum, Fort Dodge August 30, 2014 – December 31, 2014 Wagoner’s General Store, Kirkville, Iowa.

Photograph by David Plowden, 2004.