LOOKING FORWARD
Artworks are made in their own time and place by artists concerned with the present challenges of their lives. But no artwork is wholly contained by the moment of its making.
was used to purchase important photographs by Herbert Matter, Barbara Morgan, and Carrie Mae Weems. The excellence of the collection inspired transformative gifts that led to the establishment and construction of the art museum, which opened its doors in 1969. The inaugural exhibition will welcome long-loved masterpieces to their new home next to the Main Library in downtown Iowa City. But it will do so in ways that are informed by our present moment. Now, as then, exceptional artists stretch the parameters of their medium to contend with social, political, and economic crises. Jackson Pollock’s Mural (1943), made when victory in World War II seemed unclear, adopted the expansive scale of historic painting to convey a vision of American triumph. Pollock’s work inspired generations of abstract painters; but the history that Sam Gilliam captured in Red April (1970) is profoundly different from that of Pollock’s. Pleating, folding, and soaking his canvas with bright red, Gilliam made this work a year after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the spring of revolt against the exploitation and persecution of Black Americans. Stretched across
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the enormous beveled frame, the painting, however lyrical, however abstract, forces the viewer to contend with the blood that soaks American history. Artworks are made in their own time and place by artists concerned with the present challenges of their lives. But no artwork is wholly contained by the moment of its making. Rather, every artwork— collected, interpreted, and shown—resonates with our present and envisions possible futures. What the inaugural exhibition will explore are the ways that every artwork we show can reveal the world of the past, sharpen our sense of the present, and allow us to envision the future.
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