Culture
$50 million price tag, which meant a significant fundraising push for the UIMA. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which had footed the bill for an estimated 60 percent of the construction costs for other flood-affected UI buildings, didn’t share Lloyd’s of London’s assessment of the original UIMA space. Since they judged it in-tact and usable, they wouldn’t fund the new building. That’s how, in late 2017, the UIMA became the Stanley Museum of Art: in recognition of a $10 million gift—one-fifth of the funds needed for the
“NOW, WHEN I MEET WITH COMMUNITY LEADERS AND ORGANIZATIONS AND ASK, ‘WHAT CAN WE DO TOGETHER?’ WE CAN REALLY MAKE THOSE THINGS HAPPEN.”
Jason Smith / Little VIllage
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Homecoming
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The Stanley Museum celebrates a return to tangible connections between community and art. BY GENEVIEVE TRAINOR
n 2019, the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art was celebrating its 50th anniversary. It also had been nearly 11 years without a home. The floods of 2008, which wreaked havoc across Iowa, hit Cedar Rapids and Iowa City the hardest. The Cedar and Iowa Rivers crested at 31.12 ft and 31.5 ft, respectively, in those major cities. In Iowa City, the University of Iowa Museum of Art (UIMA) 36 August 2022 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV309
suffered greatly, taking enough damage that Lloyd’s of London, which insures the museum’s art collection, declared the building uninsurable. A new home would have to be built. The plans for that new home, in the center of campus next to the UI Main Library and Gilbert Park, were approved by the Iowa Board of Regents in August of 2017. They called for a three-story, 45,000-square-foot building—and came with a
rebuild—from Dick and Mary Jo Stanley. Dick, who earned his masters at the UI in 1963, was son to C. Maxwell (’26, masters ’30) and Elizabeth (’27) Stanley, who had donated their collection of African ritual masks, religious figurines and other pieces to the museum in 1985. A portion of the gift came from their estate, making the use of the family name doubly apt. The museum broke ground on its new location on June 7, 2019—the perfect way to celebrate its 50th. Construction started that September. Those milestones, and others since, have been overseen by the Stanley’s current director, Laura Lessing, who took the reins of the museum July 31, 2018, tossed into the midst of the maelstrom. Lessing is the museum’s eighth director, but of course the first to officially helm it as the Stanley Museum, and she will be the first to preside over this new building—the official Stanley Museum’s first real home. “This building is new to all of us,” Lessing said in an email to Little Village. “We will be finding out over the course of the next six months what works and what doesn’t, and refining our procedures. My job (as always) will be to support the museum’s excellent staff through this transition, get them the resources they need to do their work, and be a good ambassador for the museum and the University of Iowa.” Lessing, whose parents studied under the UIMA’s first director, Ulfert Wilke, told Little Village in October 2019, “I really wanted this job … to go to the place where the community cared so much about the arts.” Her career has been
