UIMA Spring 2009

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U N I V E R S I T Y o f I OWA M U S E U M o f A R T EXHIBITIONS April 19 – August 2 (Extended to December 31)

A Legacy for Iowa: Pollock’s Mural and Modern Masterworks from the University of Iowa Museum of Art Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second St., Davenport, IA

DONOR EVENTS May 20

5:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Volunteer Reception and Kickoff for the 40th Anniversary, South Room, Iowa Memorial Union, Iowa City

August 15

TBD

Director’s Circle Event Iowa Memorial Union, Iowa City

August 28

5:00 – 7:00 p.m.

All Donor 40th Anniversary Celebration University Athletic Club, 1360 Melrose Avenue, Iowa City

S AV E T H E D AT E !

The Museum PARTY! Saturday, October, 24, 2009 Coralville Marriott Hotel, 300 East 9th St. UIMA Advisory Board Nancy Willis, Chair Ronald Cohen Gerald Eskin Robert Fellows Bruce Gantz Susann Hamdorf James Hayes Myrene Hoover Ann January Dorothy Johnson, ex officio Richard Levitt James Lindberg Mary Keough Lyman Lynette Marshall, ex officio Linda Paul Carl Schweser

UIMA Members Council Kristin Summerwill, President Kumi Morris, Vice President Nick Hotek, Past President Charlie Anderson, Chair, Volunteer Committee Kristin Hardy, Chair, Events Committee Ruth Bentler David Bright Catherine Champion Lowell Doud Angela Gartelos Doyle

Patricia Hobson Teresa Kelly Polly Lepic Sugar Mark Monica Moen Amy Nicknish Jack Piper Drew Schiller Mark Seabold Alan Swanson

Here it is at last—the UIMA Magazine! We hope you enjoy this summer issue.

E v e n t s a r e s u b j e c t t o c h a n g e . C h e c k o u r w e b s i t e o f t e n f o r u p d a t e d i n f o : w w w. u i o w a . e d u / u i m a .

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation in order to participate in these programs, please contact the Museum of Art in advance at (319) 335-1727. The University of Iowa prohibits discrimination in employment and in its educational programs and activities on the basis of race, national origin, color, creed, religion, sex, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or associational preference. The University also affirms its commitment to providing equal opportunities and equal access to University facilities. For additional information on nondiscrimination policies, contact the Coordinator of Title IX, Section 504, and the ADA in the Office of Affirmative Action, (319) 335-0705 (voice) or (319) 335-0697 (text), the University of Iowa, 202 Jessup Hall, Iowa City, Iowa 52242-1316.

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FROM THE DIRECTOR Dear friends of the Museum,

Photo by Reginald Morrow

We’ve accomplished much this past year in the face of astounding adversity—we’ve forged a revolutionary partnership with Davenport’s Figge Art Museum to return our collection to Iowa for safe storage and display (see photos on this page); we’ve celebrated the first UIMA exhibition at the Figge with a great crowd (page 4); we’ve found three on-campus art spaces designed to keep art in the lives of our local public, particularly students (page 9); we’ve adapted our K-12 education programs to take art into the schools (page 10-11); and we’ve held a successful series of Elliott Society lectures focused on our most celebrated painting, Jackson Pollock’s Mural.

UIMA Interim Director Pamela White and Figge Executive Director Sean O’Harrow are all smiles at the opening for the first exhibition of UIMA art at the Figge on April 17.

Perhaps most exciting are the promising steps we’ve taken toward long-term recovery of the Museum. We had a wonderful turnout for our April 18 “Conversation about the future of the UI Museum of Art” with President Sally Mason, Executive Vice President and Provost Wallace Loh, Senior Vice President and University Treasurer Doug True, and UI Foundation President and CEO Lynette Marshall. Nearly 150 of you filled the Bijou Theater to voice your support for the UIMA and concerns about its future. We greatly appreciate your presence. (For those of you who could not attend, look for a transcript and audio podcast of the event on our website, www.uiowa.edu/uima.)

President Mason has heard your voices: she announced that day that she will appoint representatives from the Museum’s core constituent groups—faculty, Museum donors, volunteers, staff, and students—to serve on a UIMA “Visioning Committee.” Once formed, this group will meet through fall 2009. Its members will serve a crucial role in assisting the administration as they decide the future of the Museum. Among other tasks, they will be charged with researching university art museum best practices, location opportunities, relationships between the Museum and other parts of the University, and outreach possibilities throughout the state. The committee will also solicit feedback and ideas from the greater community, and we are working to set up an online forum on the UIMA website to host your comments.

June marks the one-year anniversary of the 2008 flood, but also the 40th anniversary of the UI Museum of Art. As we plan special events to celebrate that auspicious beginning, we look forward to working with you to make the Museum even better than before.

Pamela J. White Interim Director P.S. Make sure you check the handy pull-out guide on pages 8 and 9 of this magazine, “Where in the world is the UIMA?” to keep track of our different locations!

Left: Art movers settle Jackson Pollock’s Mural (1943) after moving it into the Figge galleries on March 16. The painting, which weighs about 800 pounds in its traveling crate, had to be carried up the Figge’s grand staircase by 10 people.

Center: Art movers remove Pablo Picasso’s Flower Vase on a Table (1942) from its crate and (right) carry it to the galleries.

The UIMA Magazine is sponsored by Hands Jewelers: William Nusser and Elizabeth Boyd

Editor: Maggie Anderson Design: Guldeniz Danisman Martinek

Front image (from A Legacy for Iowa exhibition) Lyonel Feininger (American, active in Germany, 1871-1956) In a Village Near Paris (Street in Paris, Pink Sky), 1909 Oil on canvas 39 3 4” x 32” Gift of Owen and Leone Elliott 1968.15 3

e x hibitions

A Legacy for Iowa

Pollock’s Mural and Modern Masterworks from the University of Iowa Museum of Art

Organized by the University of Iowa Museum of Art • Extended through December 31

Nearly 1,000 people attended the opening weekend events at the Figge Art Museum for A Legacy for Iowa, the first display of art from the UIMA at the Figge featuring 22 of the most important paintings in the Museum’s collection.

Visitors to the Figge Art Museum have a lot to talk about now that the Museum’s collection is back in Iowa!

Revealing each work as remarkable in its own right, the exhibition also suggests how the objects and their makers interrelate to create a tapestry of complex and fascinating stories.

“We chose the word ‘legacy’ for the exhibition title because it has to do with what the past provides for the future,” said UIMA Chief Curator Kathleen Edwards, who organized the show. “We explore both the significance of the individual paintings that are included in the show and how they came to the Museum.”

The scope of the exhibition spans 70 years of Modern Art, from Lyonel Feininger’s 1909 In a Village Near Paris (cover image) to Philip Guston’s 1979 Ramp. Paintings by Feininger and Alexej von Jawlensky, among others, showcase hallmarks of European Modernism while wartime works by Max Beckmann, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Marsden Hartley, Robert Motherwell, and Jackson Pollock tap into the intensely humanistic feelings and internationalism of the period. It was in this context, when New York became the center of the art world, that Jackson Pollock created the iconic Mural, considered to be one of the most important modern American paintings.

It was Pollock’s impetus that led artists like Philip Guston and Yayoi Kusama, whose work is also featured in the exhibition, to not only invent their own visual props and styles but also encode their autobiographies in their painting.

One of the last innovations presented in A Legacy for Iowa is Ad Reinhardt’s Abstract Painting (1960-1961). The canvas, with its subtle variations in color, represents the artist’s reaction against the Abstract Expressionist movement and earlier painters’ integration of autobiography in their work; Reinhardt aimed to negate expression and the presence of the artist.

Each of the 22 paintings in the exhibition is an iconic example of visual experimentation, innovation, reformation, and transformation—all themes that reside at the heart of the UIMA’s remarkable collections.

Exhibition tours Saturdays at 1:30 p.m. through July 25th

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Kristin Hardy of the UIMA Members Council examines the merchandise in the Figge Art Museum Store on the opening weekend of the exhibition A Legacy for Iowa: Pollock’s Mural and Modern Masterworks from the University of Iowa Museum of Art.

New UIMA Merchandise!

When you visit the UIMA collection at the Figge, make sure you stop by the Figge Art Museum Store to check out the exciting new UIMA merchandise for sale. Your selection can include mugs, t-shirts, notecards, posters, and other great items featuring key works from the UIMA collection, including Jackson Pollock’s Mural, Marc Chagall’s The Blue Horse, and Grant Wood’s Plaid Sweater.

Items are also available for order and pick up at the UIMA offices, in the Studio Arts Building (formerly Menards), 1375 Highway 1 West, Iowa City. An online UIMA merchandise gallery will be coming soon.

Call (319) 335-1725 or e-mail uima@uiowa.edu for more information.

Exhibition sponsored by Ann and Alan January Promotional sponsors U S Ba n k DavenportOne Bettendorf Chamber of

Commerce Molyneaux Insurance Inc. Quad City Illinois Chamber Quad City Times Trissel, Graham and Toole Group Benefits Inc. Photos on this page by Reginald Morrow

P R E N D E R G A S T TO M A S S AC H U S E T T S , I TA LY, T E X A S Two UIMA works will be part of an upcoming exhibition organized by the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Prendergast in Italy, the first exhibition devoted entirely to American artist Maurice Prendergast’s watercolors, monotypes, and oil paintings, examines the artist’s view of Italy as informed by European trends but filtered through his American perspective.

It will be on display in Williamstown July 18 through Sept. 20 before traveling to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy (Oct. 9-Jan. 3) and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (Feb. 14-May 9).

Maurice Brazil Prendergast (American, 1858-1924) Festa del Redentore, Venice (Fiesta, Venice), c. 1899 Monotype on paper Gift of John J. Brady, Jr., The University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA. 1992.22

P I C A R D TO C A L I F O R N I A , N E W YO R K From Jan. 27 to May 4, five works from the UIMA collection by artist Lil Picard (American, born in Germany, 1899-1994) were on loan to the exhibition Paul McCarthy’s Low Life Slow Life: Part 2 at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, California College of the Arts, San Francisco. This two-part exhibition, curated by the acclaimed Los Angelesbased artist Paul McCarthy, presented a diverse range of artists and artworks related to McCarthy’s memories of his own career, including Picard.

The five works featured in this exhibition are just a small portion of Picard’s estate, which came to the University of Iowa in 1999. The estate includes over 76 linear feet of papers at UI Special Collections and more than 700 works of art by Picard in the UIMA’s collection.

Lil Picard (American, born in Germany, 1899-1994) Supermag Dance, 1963 Assemblage on wire mesh mounted on cardboard © The University of Iowa Museum of Art, Lil Picard Collection.

UIMA Chief Curator Kathleen Edwards will examine Lil Picard in-depth in the upcoming exhibition Lil Picard and Counter-Culture New York, which will include approximately 50 paintings, collages, assemblages, drawings, two re-created installations, and a computer station with biographical material, image documents and writing selections. The exhibition will be presented at the UI Black Box Theater Nov. 13, 2009–Feb. 28, 2010, and at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, April 20–July 18, 2010.

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UIMA ON THE ROAD

collections

Mapping art in Southern Africa

By Claire Lekwa, UIMA Marketing and Media Intern Photos contributed by David Riep

David Riep could tell the woman was a traditional healer by her vibrant red clothing.

He saw her as she traveled on a pilgrimage along the border of South Africa and Lesotho [Luh-SOO-too]. She wore a tunic, skirt, belt, headband, and necklaces, all decorated with intricately beaded patterns.

Her ancestors bestowed these geometric designs to her through a dream, endowing the outfit with great personal and spiritual value.

A traditional healer, or ngaka, wears an outfit similar to one recently acquired by the UIMA.

When he spotted the healer—or ngaka in her native language—and her exquisite ensemble, Riep, a UI doctoral candidate in African art history and former UIMA graduate curatorial assistant for African art, thought of the UIMA’s renowned African collection. He approached her to ask if she would consider selling her outfit for an educational purpose. The idea interested her, and she proposed an exchange: for a cow and sheep, the UIMA could add the items to its collection.

The UIMA owns significantly less work from Southern Africa than Central and West Africa. At the end of 2007, the over 1,700-piece African art collection contained only 26 objects from southern cultures. But with Riep’s help, this number will grow substantially.

A Basotho artist displays her hand-embroidered beadwork.

Riep and his family moved to South Africa last September so that he could complete his dissertation: creating the first comprehensive framework for identifying Basotho art. A Sothospeaking cultural group, Basotho people live in the African countries South Africa and Lesotho—an enclave the size of Maryland that is completely enclosed within South Africa.

While he is in Africa, the UIMA plans to spend approximately $10,000 to purchase field-collected South Sotho pieces, including traditional outfits and personal objects such as walking sticks, beer cups, and the conical Basotho hat.

Riep’s ability to gather the objects directly from their Basotho owners gives the items immense educational value.

“We don’t know who made or owned many of the African pieces in our collection,” UIMA Chief Curator Kathleen Edwards said. “David’s work allows us to understand these pieces in their full context.”

For Riep, the opportunity to help teach American students about Basotho culture is invaluable.

David Riep helps his three-year-old son, Silas, paint part of a mural on the side of a Basotho home. Basotho women paint the murals to honor their ancestors Riep said, and he observed the process as research for his dissertation. “To get to see these traditions and arts at arm’s length was incredible,” he said.

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“I think it’s important for Museum visitors to have the chance to view art from these different cultures alongside one another and see how unique and diverse they are,” he said.

AFRICA

Lesotho: Quick Facts • Official languages: Sesotho • One of only three enclaves (a country [Suh-SOO-too] and English completely enclosed within another country) in the world. The other two • Nationality: Basotho are San Marino and the Vatican City, [Buh-SOO-too] both surrounded by Italy.

South Africa

Lesotho

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Known as the “Kingdom in the Sky” for its high-altitude terrain, it is the only country in the world that counts its entire territory above 1,000 meters in elevation.

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Formerly called Basutoland, the country was renamed Lesotho after it gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1966.

A Collaboration Between the Universty of Iowa Museum of Art and the Iowa City School District

UIMA receives Warhol photographs

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A star-studded crowd has joined the UIMA’s collection—more than 150 original photographs by American pop-artist Andy Warhol.

The Raphael Club, a local art group, recently donated a woodcut by American printmaker Helen Hyde (1868-1919) to the UIMA in honor of its 125th anniversary. The group presented the piece, entitled The Bath (1905) to the Museum on March 29 at a reception in Raphael Club secretary Linda Paul’s home.

Celebrities posed for many of the photographs, which Warhol used as studies for his iconic, silkscreen prints, known for their statements on pop culture throughout the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.

The UIMA received the gift of 105 Polaroids and 50 gelatin silver prints from The Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program, established by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in honor of its 20th anniversary. The program has donated more than 28,500 original Warhol photographs, most never before made public, to 183 college and university art museums across the country, giving students new insight into Warhol’s artistic process.

Photographs given to the UIMA include: Truman Capote, after Aug. 1977, Polacolor Type 108.

Captivated by Capote’s controversial portrait on the back of his 1948 book, Other Voices, Other Rooms, Warhol wrote the author fan letters, and the two eventually became good friends, partying at Studio 54 and working together on various writing projects in Rolling Stone and Warhol’s Interview magazine.

Diane von Furstenberg, 1984, Polacolor ER. Warhol’s high contrast portraits of this influential American fashion designer still decorate her home and New York studio. Von Furstenberg has said Warhol inspired her early in her career, and recently she paid homage to him by featuring his prints on a collection of swimwear and cover-ups. ­— C. Lekwa

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Paul and UIMA Chief Curator Kathleen Edwards selected the piece together last October at the International Fine Print Dealers Association print fair in New York.

“At the fair, Kathy and I were amazed to discover that not only had we both selected the same piece, The Bath, but it was also both of our top choices,” Paul said.

Hyde lived in Japan for nearly 15 years, and the influence that Japanese culture had on her is evident in much of her work, which is best known for its depictions of Japanese women and children. ­— C. Lekwa

(From left) UIMA Members Council President Kristin Summerwill, UIMA Chief Curator Kathleen Edwards, UIMA Interim Director Pamela White, and Raphael Club secretary Linda Paul, who also serves on the UIMA Advisory Board, stand with the Club’s gift to the Museum, a woodcut by American printmaker Helen Hyde.

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Where in the wo It can be a bit confusing to find the Museum of Art these days. Since the Flood of 2008 left the Museum without a building, the staff offices have been moved, then moved again, and finally moved once more; programs and events are spread around the city in several venues; and the Museum’s collection is being exhibited in new locations.

Consider these pages your guide to where the UIMA is now. Tear it out, post it on your fridge, keep it in your car—do whatever you need to do to help you find the Museum!

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The Figge Art Museum, Iowa’s oldest art museum, has offered the UIMA significant space for display and storage of its permanent collection, Museum of Artorganized exhibitions, and traveling shows in its three-year-old, state-of-the-art museum building.

The first exhibition of UIMA at the Figge, A Legacy for Iowa: Pollock’s Mural and Modern Masterworks from the University of Iowa Museum of Art, will be on display through Dec. 31.

Located at 225 West Second Street in Davenport, Iowa, the Figge building was designed by Stirling Prize-winning British architect David Chipperfield. Admission is FREE for UI students, faculty, and staff with their University ID cards and UIMA donors with their donor courtesy card. The general public is welcome for regular Figge admission prices: adults $7, seniors and students $6, children ages 3-12 $4. Hours are Tues.-Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Thurs. 10 a.m.-9 p.m., Sun. 12-5 p.m.

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STUDIO ARTS 1375 Highway 1 West

The UIMA offices are located in the Studio Arts Building (formerly Menards), 1375 Highway 1 West, 1840 SA, Iowa City. Regular office hours are 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. M-F.

@LEVITT CENTER The Levitt Center for University Advancement’s Stanley Gallery, located at 1 Park Rd., will serve as an educational oncampus space for the UIMA, housing African art to coordinate with UI classes. Much of the Museum’s This Antelope mask, or koan, from the Nuna people of Burkina Faso, African art collection is one of the objects on display at was donated by the the UIMA Levitt Center Gallery. gallery’s namesakes, the Stanley family, whose members have been among the University’s most generous benefactors.

“Seeing these objects in person will make my teaching and their study much more rewarding,” said Christopher Roy, UIMA Research Curator of Africa Art and Elizabeth M. Stanley Professor in the Art History department.

rld is the UIMA? @ Iowa Advanced Tech. Labs

BLOOMINGTON ST.

In any given semester, thousands of students depend on the Museum of Art as a resource.

To help meet these needs, the Museum of Art will be utilizing two spaces in the Iowa Memorial Union (IMU) as art galleries specifically designed for classroom use beginning in the fall of 2009.

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Schaeffer Hall

Seamans Center for the Engeneering Arts and Science

Grant helps fund UIMA gallery Before they open, each of the UIMA’s new art spaces will undergo construction to make them suitable for the display of art. Working with UI Risk Management and Lloyd’s of London, which insures the UIMA collection, the Museum of Art staff has developed plans to retrofit each space to maintain the levels of humidity, light, and security that are required to keep art safe.

To help finance the Richey Ballroom renovation, the UIMA has received an Emergency Flood Assistance grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The project has a total budget of about $1 million, 90 percent of which is funded through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Of the $110,000 remaining, the UIMA will receive $30,000 from NEH to defray expenses for shelving, lighting, and humidifiers to be installed in the ballroom, with the university funding the balance of the match.

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded $I million in Emergency Flood Assistance Grants for museums, libraries, archives, universities and other cultural and historical institutions in federally designated disaster areas affected by the floods in the Midwest. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The IMU’s Richey Ballroom, a 4,000-squarefoot space located in the northeast corner of the building, will house a broad, thematic selection of works from the UIMA permanent collection that will be used for classroom instruction. It will also include a glass-walled classroom where small groups of students can view and handle art objects up close.

“The Richey Ballroom will be a true visual classroom,” said Pamela White, UIMA Interim Director.

The approximately 1,600-square-foot Black Box Theater, located just south of the Richey Ballroom, will periodically serve as a space for educationally oriented and facultyorganized temporary exhibitions.

“The Museum of Art curatorial staff is working closely with faculty to make sure the installations in these spaces are relevant to courses being taught,” said Kathleen Edwards, UIMA chief curator, who is planning which objects will go in the space.

The UIMA’s IMU spaces will also be open to the public. Viewing hours will be announced prior to the opening of each space.

“This wonderful cooperative effort helps us accomplish our top flood recovery priority: fulfilling our academic mission,” said UI President Sally Mason. “Bringing resources of the UIMA back to our students is tremendous progress. I am thrilled that we are also able to fulfill our service mission by making important parts of the art museum collection available again for the enjoyment of Iowans and our larger public.”

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Fisher spoke with more than 600 seventh graders in 24 class periods over four days at two of Iowa City’s middle schools during this year’s iteration of the UIMA’s “Discover Africa” program.

“Discover Africa” illustrates how the UIMA has adapted its educational offerings since the 2008 flooding closed the former Museum building on Riverside Drive and made field trips to the Museum impossible. While there is no replacement for the museum experience, Fisher said that the flood presented an opportunity to test some outreach strategies he has been contemplating for quite some time.

“The modified ‘Discover Africa’ program allows the students more time with the art,” he said. Between his two visits and one more class with the teacher, each student spends triple the amount of time with the art.

In addition, Fisher purchased twelve African handson quality objects to form an “Outreach Study Collection,” which was installed in the schools for a month before his visit so students had the chance to become familiar with the works.

UIMA Director of Education Dale Fisher helps a student in Terryl Bockelman’s seventhgrade global studies class try on an African mask, part of the UIMA’s “Outreach Study Collection” of hands-on art objects.

UIMA Director of Education Dale Fisher pointed to a wavy line carved into an African mask that sat on a table at the front of Terryl Bockelman’s seventhgrade global studies class at Southeast Jr. High.

“Any idea what this symbolizes?” he asked.

Hands popped up.

“Water?” one student supposed.

“Maybe,” Fisher replied. “It sure looks like water. But what else do you think it might be?”

Another hand.

“The highs and lows of someone’s life?” the student asked.

“Right,” Fisher said. “Wow, you got it!”

After talking about the meanings of some more of the mask’s symbols, Fisher passed the object around the classroom. Each student had the chance to handle it—and even to try it on.

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“They get a very real sense of how the objects are used in the culture that created the works by handling them directly,” Fisher said. “They can understand the physicality of the objects in a way they don’t when they sit in a case. It’s a different level of engagement.”

Plus, it’s just fun to touch art—something that’s prohibited in a museum. As the students in Bockelman’s class picked up the objects, their faces lit up. They tried to make the small beaded cap from the Lega people fit on their head and lifted the more than 20-pound, nearly three-foot-tall Congo Power Figure. They made connections between how the works were used in coming-of-age rituals in Africa that are similar to those in the United States, and they were fascinated by the people who would have worn the Yoruba ancestor mask.

“It was really cool you could touch and wear the masks,” said student Zach Barnes, 13. “I like how they explain how they use them in rituals.” *** On the other side of town at Coralville Central Elementary School, UIMA docent Judi Gust prepared to talk with a group of third graders about the other

Two students in Becky Kobos’ third-grade art class examine a hands-on African piece. UIMA docents are taking art into the classrooms as a part of the Museum’s adapted “Widen Our World” education program.

modified UIMA education program: “Widen Our World,” or “WOW!” Gust discussed key works from the UIMA collection, from examples of modern art to contemporary sculpture and Pre-Columbian ceramics, using PowerPoint images. She pointed to a projection of Pablo Picasso’s Flower Vase on a Table (1942) and asked the children to describe what they saw.

“It’s like the picture is origami,” said one. “It looks like it was a picture and someone broke the glass,” said another.

“It still amazes me to hear kids get excited about art,” said Becky Kobos, the art coordinator for the Iowa City Community School District and the art teacher at Coralville Central. “They analyze it and come up with these really interesting perspectives.”

After the students discussed the art they saw on the projection, Gust took out her traveling education kit. It contained works the students could handle, from a stretched canvas to a six-piece model of The Figure, a puzzle-like sculpture by Isamu Noguchi (on long-term loan to the Museum) that students work in teams to assemble.

Kobos, who has been an art educator for more than 30 years, counts the school’s partnership with the Museum among its most important.

“They learn about the elements of art—line, shape, and form. It’s like another language,” Kobos said.

“There’s not necessarily one right answer in the arts, so kids are thinking in a more open-ended way, coming up with new solutions instead of repeating the same solutions.”

Since learning about the Museum as an institution was such a big part of “WOW!” in the past (the visits are often students’ first experiences in a museum), Fisher said this program presents a greater challenge than “Discover Africa.” He hopes to be able to integrate a visit to the UIMA’s Richey Ballroom space in the Iowa Memorial Union, due to open in late August, to help the third graders learn about viewing a museum space.

And if “WOW!” continues going to the schools, Fisher is planning slight modifications to make it an even better service to the students.

“We’re planning on going more hands-on and less PowerPoint,” he said. “Teachers don’t have access to many hands-on works like a museum does, so that’s something we can do that they can’t.”

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We’re turning

UIMA

Relax outside and help us celebrate being “over the hill” at this kick-off for a year of anniversary-themed events.

To receive the “Gems Certificate,” participants must attend four multimedia presentations led by UIMA Director of Education Dale Fisher and a session on The John Martin Rare Book Room in the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences.

August 28, 5-7 p.m.

University Athletic Club, 1360 Melrose Ave. All UIMA donors are invited to attend this casual, festive event—and bring a friend!

Entertainment by local classic rock cover band The Beaker Brothers Light hors d’oeuvres and cash bar

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Even after the flood, university employees can still learn about the UIMA’s collection through the “Unveiling an Iowa Gem” program organized by the UI Human Resources’ Learning and Development department. The series of educational talks and activities reveals “treasures” on campus—including important art pieces in the UIMA collection.

“Of course, we’d prefer to be in front of the actual paintings,” said Sean Hesler, UI Learning and Development coordinator. “But Dale is still able to bring something of value to the people who take the class.”

“Unveiling an Iowa Gem” programs are held once a month from noon to 1 p.m. UI employees may register online at any time through Employee Self Service. More information on the series can be found at: www.uiowa.edu/learn/gems.html. ­— C. Lekwa

UIMA Student Employee Honored examines the intense professional relationship between 17th-century painter Peter Paul Rubens and his star printmaker, Lucas Vorsterman. After years of close collaboration, the two colleagues had a falling out, and in 1622, Vorsterman tried to kill the famed Baroque artist.

“This is the stuff you don’t read about in textbooks,” Popp said.

Rubens held his printmakers to rigorous standards, demanding that they reproduce his painterly style with precision so he could distribute his work more widely and garner new patrons.

Cornelis Galle the Elder (Flemish, 1576-1650) Procne Showing Tereus the Head of his Child (after Peter Paul Rubens), c. 1637 Engraving, Museum Purchase, 1980.92

Nathan Popp, UIMA curatorial graduate assistant, was selected as one of four to present a paper at the Midwest Art History Society’s annual conference in Kansas City April 2-4, a prestigious opportunity for the UI graduate student.

His paper, “An Equation for Conflict: Micromanaging Creativity in Rubens’ Printmaking Workshop,”

“By pushing his printmakers, Rubens forced them to create innovations in printmaking, contributing to the development of the medium,” Popp said.

Popp will curate a corresponding exhibit for display in Davenport’s Figge Art Museum in January 2010 that will include around 50 of the UIMA’s prints made after paintings by artists such as Rubens, Diego Velázquez, Raphael, and John James Audubon.

— C. L.

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1375 Highway 1 West, 1840 Studio Arts Iowa City, Iowa 52242 (319) 335-1727 www.uiowa.edu/uima