Stanley Museum of Art Magazine Fall 2019 by University of Iowa Stanley Musuem of Art

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STAN L E Y M US EU M .U IOWA.EDU

Stanley museum ofart

temporary offices

OLD MUSEUM OF ART BUILDING 150 N. Riverside Drive OMA 100 Iowa City, IA 52242 319-335-1727 stanley-museum@uiowa.edu

temporary locations

IOWA MEMORIAL UNION

FIGGE ART MUSEUM

STANLEY VISUAL CLASSROOM Room 376 (Richey Ballroom)

225 West Second Street Davenport, IA 52801 563-326-7804

125 North Madison Street Iowa City, IA 52242 319-335-1742 Free admission Hours Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Thursday: 10 a.m.–9 p.m. Saturday and Sunday: 12–5 p.m.

Free admission for University of Iowa students, faculty, and staff with UI ID cards and SMA members with membership cards. Hours Tuesday–Saturday 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Thursday: 10 a.m.–9 p.m.

CLASSIC AL

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Cover image This shovel was first used on October 17, 1966 for the groundbreaking of the original University of Iowa Museum of Art. It was used again on February 19, 1974 when the Carver Galleries expanded the museum’s size. Over the years the shovel has been used for the launch of multiple University building projects including the UIHC Carver Pavilion and the Levitt Center for University Advancement. Fifty years after its debut, this shovel was used by Director Lauren Lessing on June 7, 2019 at the ceremonial groundbreaking of the new Stanley Museum of Art.

Calendar of Events

Director’s Welcome

6 ON VIEW Visual Classroom Legacies for Iowa

12 COLLECTIONS The Director Collects: Simone Leigh 14 PHILANTHROPY My Museum: Building a Home for Art 16 NEW BUILDING 18 PUBLIC PROGRAMS Talks Saturdays at the Stanley 22 EDUCATION Campus Advisory Board Partnership: Office of Outreach & Engagement 24 STAFF SPOTLIGHTS Lindley Warren Mickunas Cory Gundlach Joyce Tsai 28 EVENTS 50th Anniversary Gala Steins for Stanley 31 From the UI Center for Advancement

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STAN L E Y M US EU M .U IOWA.EDU

Stanleymuseumofart EXHIBITIONS May 4–September 9, 2019

Views from the Other Side, Figge Art Museum

June 29–October 21, 2019

Anonymous Donor, Figge Art Museum

July 30–December 8, 2019

Stanley Visual Classroom, Iowa Memorial Union

Opens November 2, 2019

Pollinators, Figge Art Museum

PUBLIC PROGRAMS September 6

5:00–7:00 p.m.

First Friday, FilmScene, 118 E. College St., Iowa City

September 10 3:30–5:00 p.m.

Town Hall for the Obermann Humanities Symposium “What Can Museums Become?,” Obermann Center Library, 111 Church St., Iowa City

September 11 6:30–8:00 p.m.

“Iowa Bibliophiles” conversation with Joyce Tsai and Anna Barker celebrating campus exhibitions on Goya and Tolstoy, Special Collections, University of Iowa Main Library, 125 W. Washington St., Iowa City

September 19 5:30–7:00 p.m.

WorldCanvass presents “Art and the Face of War: Goya and Tolstoy” MERGE, 136 South Dubuque Street, Iowa City; Pre-show reception from 5:00–5:30 p.m.

September 26 7:30 p.m.

Talk: “Amazigh Women’s Arts: Visual Expressions of Berber Identity,” by Cynthia Becker, 116 Art Building West, 141 N. Riverside Dr., Iowa City

October 4

First Friday, FilmScene, 118 E. College St., Iowa City

5:00–7:00 p.m.

October 9–15

War and Peace (1969, dir. Sergey Bondarchuk), FilmScene, 118 E. College St., Iowa City

October 28

7:00–9:00 p.m.

“Black Curators’ Roundtable” featuring Gia Hamilton, Eileen Isagon Skyers, and Gee Wesley, moderated by Anaïs Duplan, Room A, Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City

October 31

12:00–1:00 p.m.

Rachel Grimes in conversation with the Iowa Women’s Archives, Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Main Library, 125 W. Washington St, Iowa City

November 1

5:00–7:00 p.m.

First Friday, FilmScene, 118 E. College St., Iowa City

November 5

7:30 p.m.

Talk: “Rectilinear Solidity/Interconnected Voids,” by Carey Nagel, 240 Art Building West, 141 N. Riverside Dr., Iowa City

December 6

5:00–7:00 p.m.

First Friday, FilmScene, 118 E. College St., Iowa City

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Dear Friends, I am delighted to be writing to you on this beautiful summer day in Iowa City as I complete my first year as director of the Stanley. It has been a busy and exciting twelve months! Since I arrived last July, we have shaped a new mission and vision for the museum, crafted a strategic plan that will guide our work for the next five years, and built important new partnerships on campus, in our Iowa community, and across the country. Our collection, our staff, our board, and our base of support have all grown. Perhaps most importantly, we will soon be able to bring our world-class collections home. The painter Jackson Pollock once said that all art is “a big game of construction” that some people pursue with a pen, others with a brush, and still others with a shovel. At the University of Iowa the work of the pen and the brush are celebrated every day, but on June 7 we celebrated the shovel as we ceremonially broke ground for the Stanley’s beautiful and long-awaited new building. The sun shone, the birds sang, and the sizable crowd filling Gibson Square Park cheered and applauded. The building is off to a great start. As university president Bruce Harreld noted in his remarks at the groundbreaking, this is an excellent time to build an art museum. Museums are in a moment of extraordinary change that some have called the “educational turn,” because we are turning to face and engage our audiences in new ways. Thanks to the growing diversity in our field, we are also incorporating more voices and more points of view into our galleries. Finally, this is a great time to build a museum because art has never been more needed than it is right now, and we understand more clearly than ever the many ways that art serves us. Art shifts cultural paradigms and strengthens our economy. It enhances our empathy, hones our ability to think creatively, soothes us, excites us, and reminds us that we are human. Let the “big game of construction” begin!

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Fall 2019

The Stanley Visual Classroom The Stanley Visual Classroom (SVC) highlights the UI Stanley Museum of Art’s connections to students, faculty, and the community in its three fall exhibitions. Drawn from different artistic traditions and time periods, collective efforts link Contemporary Haitian Painting, The Disasters of War, and Follow Her Lead: Womanhood in African and Diasporic Arts.

Contemporary Haitian Painting features five paintings from the groundbreaking Haitian Art Collection at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, IA. This exhibition was curated in collaboration with Dr. Anny Curtius and her Spring 2019 graduate seminar “Francophone Thought.” Kimberly Musial Datchuk, assistant curator of special projects, guided the class through the process of researching and planning an exhibition. A formative moment occurred in May when the students held a video conference with Edouard Duval-Carrié, an artist in the show. Duval-Carrié’s generosity of time and willingness to share proved indispensable to understanding his work and that of his peers.

Wilmino Domond (Haitian, 1925– ) Paradis terrestre [Earthly paradise], 1967 Oil on Masonite Collection of the Figge Art Museum, Davenport City of Davenport Art Collection Gift of Dr. Walter E. Neiswanger, MD, 1967.6 Image courtesy of the Figge Art Museum

The Disasters of War also benefited from combined efforts of Chief Curator Joyce Tsai and faculty in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dr. Anna Barker and Dr. Luis Martín-Estudillo. Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes produced the Disasters series between 1810 and 1814 in response to Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Spain during the Peninsular War (1807– 1814). The prints call the viewer to bear witness to the horrors of war. The series was so controversial that it was not printed until 1863, nearly forty years after Goya’s death. Coincidentally, 1863 was the s tanley m u s e u m o f a rt

On View Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746–1828) Plate 62. Las camas de la muerte [The deathbeds] from Los Desastres de la Guerra [The Disasters of War], 1863 Etching and aquatint 9 5/16 x 13 3/4 in. Gift of Owen and Leone Elliott, 1976.43BJ

year that Leo Tolstoy finished his first draft of War and Peace, which he published in installments. Like Goya’s Disasters, the novel calls attention to the atrocities of war—in this instance Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. This exhibition coincides with an exhibition at Special Collections in the UI Main Library and events at the Iowa City Book Festival (October 1–6, 2019) to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the full-volume publication of War and Peace. As with The Disasters of War, Follow Her Lead: Womanhood in African and Diasporic Arts germinated from the rich cultural and intellectual milieu of Iowa City. The generative panel conversation at “Black Women Are the Future,” led by Cecilia C. Peters and hosted by the Center for Afrofuturist Studies and Public Space One at the Iowa City Public Library in March, informed Cory Gundlach’s conception of the exhibition. The exhibition examines gender dynamics in the production, use, and collection of African and diasporic art. While many African works in museum collections consist mainly of wooden sculptures made by men, African women had their own robust artistic traditions, most notably in the form of textiles and ceramics. Follow Her Lead calls attention to the ways in which women shaped culture and their own identities through these oftenoverlooked art forms. The exhibition includes recent acquisitions: a ceramic vessel by Simone Leigh and an Amazigh bridal ensemble. The diverse fall exhibitions underscore the purpose of the SVC as a dynamic exhibition space that supports teaching, learning, and research at the University of Iowa. They are on view from July 30 until December 8.

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Joyce J. Scott (American, 1948– ) Election Day, 2014 Woven glass beads, thread 13 x 9 in. Museum Purchase, 2017.102 7

June 29–October 27, 2019 Figge Art Museum

Anonymous Donor

Anonymous Donor takes ere ibeji figures— Yoruba sculptures created to honor the spirit of a deceased twin—as metaphor and conceptual scaffolding for an exhibition that explores dualities and often invisible alternatives in black art and experience. The show features African sculptures and artworks by internationally renowned African American artists Kara Walker, Elizabeth Catlett, and Alma Thomas from the collection of the Stanley Museum of Art. In addition, two contemporary artists give form to black rural experience. Meditation cushions (or zafus) by Des Moines-based artist Jordan Weber, filled with earth from black-owned farms in the Midwest, create a space to reflect and heal in response to the disproportionate ways communities of color are impacted by pollution and environmental crises. American Artist, in a newly commissioned work, produced a black sculpture in the form of a manual hay baler, which shares similar dimensions with an upright computer server cart. The sculpture makes manifest a recent history of tech investment in the Midwest at the same time that black farmers were prevented from securing loans and assistance to support their work.

Elizabeth Catlett (American-Mexican, 1915–2012) Walking Blindly, from For My People, 1992 Lithograph on paper Museum purchase, 2006.74F © 2019 Catlett Mora Family Trust/Licensed by VAGA at Artist Rights Society (ARS), NY

This exhibition was curated by Anaïs Duplan, Program Manager at Recess (Brooklyn, NY) and founding curator of the Center for Afrofuturist Studies (Iowa City, IA). As part of the programming for this exhibition, CAS has organized the “Black Curators’ Roundtable,” which will take place October 28 in Iowa City.

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On View may 4–september 9, 2019 Figge Art Museum

Views from the Other Side:

American Land, Place, and Region after 1900 The title of this exhibition refers not to a physical “other side,” but rather, to the other side of the year 1900. Thanks to radical changes that occurred during this period in aesthetic taste, artistic techniques, and the landscape itself, the idea of the American landscape splintered, becoming newly multifaceted and real. For the first time, sublime vistas of an untouched Edenic paradise were replaced by commonplace views from the everyday lives of Americans in rural, urban, and suburban communities across the United States. Featuring paintings, prints, and photographs by Louis Lozowick, Eve Drewelowe, Frank Gohlke, John Dilg, Robert Kipniss, Ed Ruscha, and others, Views from the Other Side shows how these artists redefined, and continue to redefine, the American landscape. This exhibition was curated by Elizabeth Spear, art history PhD candidate at the University of Iowa. John Dilg Untitled Landscape #9, 1973 Oil on canvas Ignacio and Helena Ponseti Collection, 1996.90

Both exhibitions are organized by Legacies for Iowa.

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Pollinato This exhibition explores the often invisible systems of support that fueled historic artistic production and contemporary artmaking today. opens november 2, 2019 Figge Art Museum

Labeled a “pollinator” by art historian John Richardson, Peggy Guggenheim was a glamorous, gregarious, and scandalously outrageous supporter of the arts. Guggenheim wielded her family wealth to amass a formidable collection of modern art. Additionally, Guggenheim seeded new collections across the world—including at the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art—through generous gifts of works by artists like Jackson Pollock, Roberto Matta, and Irene Rice Pereira.

Alice Stallknecht (American, 1880–1973) Dolly Lewis, 1933 Oil on canvas Gift of Joan E. Wight 1993.57

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While Guggenheim cultivated her curatorial prowess through her patronage, women artists served as pollinators in other ways. Printmaker June Wayne challenged the boundaries of her medium by establishing the Tamarind Institute, which paired master printmakers with artists trained in other media to collaborate on new works. Similarly, Lil Picard orchestrated countless happenings and elevated the work of other performance artists outside of the formal New York gallery scene. Here in Iowa, Virginia Myers pioneered technologies that expanded the possibilities of printmaking, while metalsmith Chunghi Choo revolutionized fine art jewelry. Both women taught at the University of Iowa and mentored generations of artists. During the years Myers and Choo honed their practices in Iowa City, University of Iowa alumna Georgana Falb Foster traversed India, documenting the feminine divine as it appeared in folk art dedicated to female Hindu deities. Folk art from Oaxaca, Mexico is also featured in this exhibition. These fantastical wooden creatures are brought to life through dense, colorful patterns painted by often uncredited women and are attributed to the men who carved them. Though sold as souvenirs, these objects also celebrate indigenous Oaxacan heritage. Similarly, entrepreneur and renowned potter Nampeyo of Hano revived ancient clay traditions and revitalized the Hopi-Tewa economy through the creation and sale of her distinctive vessels. Nampeyo taught her daughters and granddaughters her craft, and her descendants still carry forward her artistic legacy. fa ll 20 19

On View Works representing the contributions of these innovators, collectors, mentors, and artists will be on display in the exhibition Pollinators. This exhibition explores the often invisible systems of support that fueled historic artistic production and contemporary artmaking today. Dedicated to exploring the unknown, revealing the creative process, and celebrating new work since 2015, the Witching Hour Festival has brought underheard voices to the arts conversation in Iowa City. The cross-disciplinary festival brings visual artists, theater artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, and more into conversation with one other. Artists never stop interrogating the unknown, and the opportunity to do so in community with others is invaluable. The Stanley Museum of Art is pleased to partner with the festival to bring Kentucky-based composer Rachel Grimes to Iowa as part of the Pollinators programming. In her new work The Way Forth, Grimes contends with stories untold and people unnamed in the history of her immediate family, her home state, and our countryâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;themes central to this exhibition.

Rachel Grimes Photo: Jessie Kriech-Higdon

Join us November 1â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2 for the Witching Hour Festival, presented by The Englert Theatre and Little Village Magazine. Visit www.witchinghourfestival.com for festival schedule and to purchase passes. On Saturday, November 2 we will partner with Public Space One and the Iowa City Press Coop to offer a printmaking demonstration as part of the festival.

The Director Collects:

Simone When I encountered Simone Leigh’s recent series of Face Jug sculptures at Chicago’s Art Expo last fall, I was struck not only by their beauty and consummate craftmanship but also by their eloquence. In complex ways, these ceramic vessels, which resemble the graceful heads, faces, and necks of dark-skinned female figures, celebrate the strength of black women and the persistence of African culture in the diaspora. I knew immediately that one of Leigh’s sculptures would complement the Stanley’s strong collections of African, modernist, feminist, and ceramic art while offering us new ways to teach.

Simone Leigh 103 (Face Jug Series), 2018; Salt-fired stoneware 17 x 6 x 8 inches (43.2 x 15.2 x 20.3 cm) © Simone Leigh; Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York Photo: Farzad Owrang

In a 2018 exhibition at Luhring Augustine in New York, Leigh paired works from her Face Jug Series and other ceramic female figures with raffia forms that reference traditional African domestic architecture— specifically, the thatch-roofed houses of the Shona-speaking people in rural Zimbabwe, the Batammaliba of Benin and Togo, and the Fulani of Burkina Faso. In Figure with Skirt (Face Jug Series), a face jug emerges from one such hybrid representation of an African home. The origin of these forms is African, Leigh seems to assert, yet face jugs are also—like the artist herself—distinctly American. s tanley m u s e u m o f a rt

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e Leigh Enslaved people in Edgefield, South Carolina created the first American face jugs in the early 1860s, just a few years after a group of Kikongo-speaking captives from central Africa were put to work in the pottery yards there. Inscriptions on some of the earliest face jugs, and the use of sacred white kaolin clay for eyes, suggest that their makers associated them with nkisi figures, power objects created throughout the Congo Basin in Central Africa. It is not surprising that Leigh would evoke this complex history of displacement, translation, and survival in her work. She has described her art as “auto-ethnographic,” an approach that combines self-narrative with anthropological research. Raised by Jamaican parents in Chicago, she discovered African art through books and, later, through an internship at the Smithsonian Institution. Leigh’s Face Jug Series embodies her methodical search for her own cultural inheritance in the forms, techniques, and ethnographies of African and African American art. It charts her path to mastery through careful and exhaustive study. Collectors have sometimes called traditional American face jugs “ugly jugs” because of their exaggerated, expressive features. Leigh’s vessels, on the other hand, are indisputably lovely. Elegant and dignified, they resemble cast metal busts of obas (rulers) from the royal court of Benin. The work we selected for the Stanley’s collection, 103 (Face Jug Series), is a saltfired krater whose base resembles the long, elegant neck of a young woman. Leigh shaped the jug’s round body to represent fa ll 20 19

a slightly upturned face with African features, and the vessel’s round spout suggests a top-knot or crown balanced on the subject’s head. The warm, lustrous glaze created by the salt firing process emphasizes the texture of the clay and, trickling in little rivulets across the subject’s forehead, evokes diagonal braids. Since 2017, Leigh has enjoyed ever-increasing acclaim. This spring, she unveiled a sixteenfoot-tall bronze sculpture playfully titled Brick House as the inaugural installation for the High Line Plinth in New York City. Though monumental in scale, this majestic work depicting an African woman’s braidcrowned head and neck emerging from a dome-shaped structure is closely related to the face jugs and architectural forms Leigh exhibited the previous year, including the sculpture now in the Stanley’s collection.

Simone Leigh Brick House, 2019; A High Line Plinth commission On view June 2019–September 2020 Photo: Timothy Schenck. Courtesy the High Line

“Art adds meaning to life. It’s more than us; it’s the universe.” Ramon Lim, MD, PhD and Victoria Lim, MD

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My Museum:

Building a Home for Art For nearly four decades, retired University of Iowa professors Dr. Ramon Lim and Dr. Victoria Lim have lived in an airy, art-filled house that once overlooked the original UI Museum of Art. During those years, they’ve watched the arts campus evolve before their eyes. This inspired the couple to contribute to that growth by making a generous gift of $250,000 to the Fund for Rebuilding the UI Stanley Museum of Art. “The original museum before the flood was a wonderful place,” says Victoria, a professor emerita of internal medicine who studied endocrine and metabolic disturbances in patients with kidney failure. “Not infrequently, I would go there alone just to sit for a while, to relieve my daily tension, to sink in contemplation, and to allow the beauty of human creation to nurture me. Now, we want to make sure the new museum can offer the same experiences to others.” Ramon shares this enthusiasm for the arts on campus. A professor emeritus of neurology and conducted research in the area of brain proteins and brain cell biology, he grew up making art. As a young man, he embraced abstract painting and even won a national art competition in the Philippines. Today, he is a skilled calligrapher who fa ll 20 19

shares his talents with students at the Confucius Institute of the University of Iowa. In a book he published about literature and art, Ramon wrote, “While science allows me to explore the natural world, art, on the other hand, bestows solace, comfort, and equanimity. Thus, I pursue science and art with equal zeal.” The Lims passed on their passion for science and art to their children and grandchildren. Many of them pursue both disciplines with zest, and their works are proudly displayed in the Lim home alongside those of wellknown artists. “Visual art is not just a fashion. Like science, literature, and music, it represents some of the best products of human creativity and has immense healing power,” says Victoria. “It makes us wiser, kinder, and better human beings.” This belief is what has motivated the couple—who explore the art museums in every city they visit—to invest in the museum and other arts-focused areas on campus. The Lims see Iowa City as a “unique place of culture and creativity,” and they are proud to give back to this community which exemplifies the relationship between the creative arts and the healing arts. 15

“The new museum provides us with new possibilities … for helping ensure that we remain at the forefront of the visual arts for generations to come.”

At last! UI President J. Bruce Harreld

The long-awaited ceremonial groundbreaking for the Stanley Museum of Art took place on a sunny afternoon, Friday, June 7, with University of Iowa officials, representatives from the Iowa legislature, museum staff and supporters, and members of the community in attendance. As the robust and emotional crowd assembled in Gibson Square Park, UI alum, artist, and 2019–2020 Grant Wood Fellow Tony Orrico created a work of art by translating a series of physical movements into visual form. Remarks were made by Lynette Marshall, president and chief executive officer of the University of Iowa Center for Advancement; UI President J. Bruce Harreld; Lauren Lessing, director of the Stanley Museum of Art; and Post-Baccalaureate Curatorial Assistant Lindley Warren-Mickunas. After the shovel ceremony, guests participated in a Jackson Pollock-inspired, pigmented water balloon toss to mark the spot where the new museum will be located.

2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the museum, and eleven years since the original building was damaged by the 2008 flood. President Harreld summarized the significance of the groundbreaking and the importance of the museum to the university: “The UI Stanley Museum of Art has long been essential to our educational and research mission, and it has always been known for imaginative outreach, creating new audiences, and bold new visions. The new museum provides us with new possibilities for displaying our amazing collection, for bringing art to our students’ lives and to the general public in innovative ways, and for helping ensure that we remain at the forefront of the visual arts for generations to come.” 16

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Photos, clockwise from top: Miranda Meyer, Miranda Meyer, John Emigh, John Moyers

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Cynthia Becker September 26, 2019, 7:30 p.m. 116 Art Building West

Amazigh Women’s Arts:

Visual Expressions of Berber Identity

An Amazigh bride in rural southeastern Morocco. Photo: Cynthia Becker

Amazigh people (Berbers) are indigenous to North Africa. In Berber culture, women play a central role in creating the aesthetic and symbolic forms that make Amazigh identity unique, and they achieve considerable status and respect. Motherhood is highly esteemed by the Berbers, and women incorporate symbols and colors that relate to fertility into their textiles, clothing, tattoos, and hairstyles, as expressions of female agency. In this lecture, Cynthia Becker, Associate Professor in the History of Art and Architecture Department at Boston University, considers the artistic legacy of the Berbers within North African history by examining the creative output of Amazigh women. Despite societal influences that have changed daily life in Berber communities, women continue to produce and use art inspired by ancestral forms—especially during rural weddings— demonstrating the crucial role women play in preserving Amazigh heritage. Professor Cynthia Becker is a scholar of African arts specializing in the arts of the Imazighen (Berbers) in northwestern Africa, specifically Morocco, Algeria, and Niger. Her research has been supported by a Fulbright grant and several grants from the American Institute of Maghreb Studies. Professor Becker has served as a consultant for numerous museum exhibitions and published articles. Her book Amazigh Arts in Morocco: Women Shaping Berber Identity was published by the University of Texas Press in July of 2006. Her forthcoming book, Blackness in Post-Slavery Morocco: A History of Gnawa Visual and Performing Arts considers the history of the trans-Saharan slave trade and its implications on material culture in northern Africa. It will be published in 2020. Other projects include the visual culture and history of the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans (her hometown).

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Carey Nagle November 5, 2019, 7:30 PM 240 Art Building West

public programs

Rectilinear Solidity / Interconnected Voids Rendering by BNIM

BNIM conceived the new University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art building as a rectilinear solid interrupted by interconnected voids. These light-filled, linked spaces create a home for the display, conservation, and storage of the collection, while guiding patrons physically and visually through the museum. These are exterior exhibition spaces, educational areas, and horizontal and vertical pathways, all connected by a three-story light well that comprises the core of the museum and permeates the entirety of the experience. Recalling the timeless academic and cultural brick masonry buildings of Alvar Aalto, Louis Khan, and Eero and Eliel Saarinen, the exterior brick cladding of the museum compliments the masonry characteristics of neighboring structures and conveys the timelessness and stability of the collection housed within. Through an alternating composition of brick texture that refers to the internal organization of the building, the façade will be transformed by the daily and seasonal changes in sunlight, creating oscillating levels of reflection and shadow. The dark, warm brick contrasts with the predominantly red brick of the surrounding buildings, clearly emphasizing the significance of the museum among them. This meaningful dichotomy is further emphasized with the white, light-filled fa ll 20 19

interiors and warm wood detailing. Carey Nagle, AIA LEED AP BD+C is a principal in BNIM’s Des Moines office. Carey has emerged as a young leader in the realm of high-performance design excellence and professional leadership. He is a holistic practitioner with a broad range of notable project experience, including museums and cultural facilities, as well as higher education projects, office buildings, adaptive reuse, and modernist preservation. Carey is currently leading the design of the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art. His projects have been recognized with multiple national awards from the American Institute of Architects (AIA), including the 2016 AIA Honor Award for the renovation of the American Enterprise Group National Headquarters and the 2012 COTE Top Ten Green Building Award for the Iowa Utilities Board and Office of Consumer Advocate. Carey received his Bachelors of Architecture from Iowa State University. He currently serves on the Iowa State University Department of Architecture’s Architectural Advisory Committee and the City of Des Moines’ Urban Design Review Board. In 2016, Carey received the AIA National Young Architect Award.

Fall 2019

Saturdays at the Stanley Saturdays at the Stanley brings the museum’s collection to audiences in a casual, fun, and interactive atmosphere. Each event has a theme that looks at our artwork from a different perspective. Curators lead visitors through a selection of works, share stories about the artists and subject matter, and open the discussion up to the audience. We invite visitors of all ages to participate in these conversations and get (re)acquainted with our collection as we look forward to the opening of our new building! All talks begin at 2:00 p.m.

CT scan image (photo by Tim Schoon)

September 21 Hidden Powers: CT Scanning the Stanley’s African Art Collection Through a partnership with UI Hospitals and Clinics Department of Radiology, Stanley museum staff used computer tomography (CT) scanning technology to view the interior contents of more than a dozen objects from sub-Saharan Africa. Join Cory Gundlach, Curator of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, to explore the concealed dimensions of African art and how advanced technical analysis aids the interpretation of the Stanley Museum of Art permanent collection. October 5 Indigenous Art (Indigenous Peoples Day) In recognition of Indigenous Peoples Day, celebrate indigenous cultures of the Americas at the Stanley. A curator of education will take visitors through a selection from the Stanley’s artworks of the Americas, which includes Pre-Columbian ceramics, Native American textiles, and ledger drawings from the nineteenth century.

José Guadalupe Posada (Mexican, 1852–1913) La calavera de Madero [Skeleton of Madero], 1910 Photo-relief 13 1/2 x 7 1/4 in. Gift of Kenneth J. Oberembt, 1986.11 20

October 26 Day of the Dead José Guadalupe Posada used skulls, bones, and skeletons in his prints to critique the Mexican government and society. Although the imagery carried political message, it has become popular in decorations for Día de muertos [Day of the Dead] in Mexico, celebrated from October 31 to November 2. Look at examples of Posada’s work and learn about his socially conscious art in anticipation of the Mexican holiday. s tanley m u s e u m o f a rt

public programs November 2 Game Day What’s the museum got to do with sports? Come find out during Iowa’s bye week, and get your football (and art) fix at the Stanley. Our sports-themed works include John Pusey’s Football from 1935, a colored chalk drawing that captures the energy and excitement of game day that Hawkeye fans know well. Pusey was born in Council Bluffs, IA and worked with Grant Wood overseeing WPA artists in Stone City, IA. November 9 Frenemies: Picasso and Matisse Frenemies: friend-enemies. Not all friendships are created equal. Frenemies have the outward appearance of friendship, but they can also feel intense rivalry or even hatred for each other. The movie Mean Girls brought attention to the concept when it premiered in 2004, but frenemies has a long history in the art world. In the early twentieth century, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, two of the biggest names in modern art, spurred each other on through their friendship and competition. On Wednesdays, they wore stripes.

John Pusey (American, 1905–1966) Football, 1934 Colored chalk 31 1/2 x 40 1/2 in. On loan from the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration, 1935.9

December 7 Cat People Art The internet may have fueled our collective cat-craziness, but it didn’t start it. Edouard Manet, for example, drew a cat on a balcony smelling potted flowers, and Tsugouharu Foujita drew his self-portrait many times with his beloved cat resting its head on his shoulder or sitting on him. See how cats have captivated artists for over a hundred years. December 14 Get Cozy at the Stanley Put on your comfy clothes and snuggle up. Join us for an afternoon of hygge, the Danish word for coziness, comfort, and well-being, especially important in the winter months. Director Lauren Lessing will guide visitors through some of the coziest works in the collection to help us embrace the comforting possibilities cold winter afternoons can offer.

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Unknown artist Untitled (cat bookend), Staffordshire, c. 1850 Porcelain 7 x 3 5/8 x 2 7/8 in. The Alden Lowell Doud Collection, m2014.37b

Introducing the Stanley Campus Council

A Flo

The museum’s new mission and vision statements emphasize that the University of Iowa community lies at the very heart of our work. Our collection has always been a catalyst for innovative teaching and learning at the university, and we’ve been able to reach students in departments from Anthropology to Human Anatomy and Physiology. Yet, the UI experience extends beyond the classroom, and one critical challenge as we prepare for a new museum building in 2022 is making the Stanley a center for campus life outside of the classroom. This summer Elly Woods enjoyed Europe while interning at a PR agency in London.

Enter our new student-focused initiative, the Stanley Campus Council. This Campus Council will function as a student advisory board, giving both undergraduate and graduate students a voice in shaping how the museum engages with students through events and programs on campus. Students involved in the Campus Council will be led by the Campus Engagement Coordinator, a fellow student on a year-long appointment with the museum. This student leader will play a critical role in charting out the council’s activities each semester and guiding the group in the development and implementation of new programs and events. Stepping into this newly created role for the 2019–20 academic year is senior Elly Woods. Elly is majoring in Journalism and Mass Communication with a minor in Spanish and a certificate in nonprofit management. Elly and the Campus Council will be action researchers, working closely with museum staff to experiment with new types of events and programs meant to draw the UI community into the museum and to help them connect with our collections. On the horizon may be programs like ukulele jam sessions, meditations in the galleries, dance performances on the terrace, and art-infused study breaks—each program thoughtfully designed to highlight the Stanley’s collections and build new bridges to UI students.

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urishing Partnership The museum has been deeply fortunate to find a group of committed champions and supporters within the Provost’s Office of Outreach and Engagement. This office, founded in 2013, is a hub for university outreach efforts across Iowa in fields ranging from public art to public health, with many others in between. Given the Stanley’s own robust outreach efforts for the last ten years, the Legacies for Iowa Collections-Sharing Project and Stanley School Programs, it only seems natural that our two outward-facing units find a great deal of common ground.

The first seeds of collaboration were planted several years ago when the Stanley began presenting lectures by fellows in residence at the Grant Wood Art Colony, which is a program within the Outreach and Engagement Office. These public lectures by forward-thinking artists in painting, printmaking, and interdisciplinary performance are now a staple of the museum’s annual lecture program. Most recently, we partnered to offer an intensive public art residency course in the School of Art and Art History during spring break in March 2019. Taught by Associate Curator Vero Rose Smith and Director of Public Art for the Iowa City Downtown District Thomas Agran, this course armed students with the practical skills needed to pursue public art commissions. Several students have since teamed up with communities including Tipton and Maquoketa to produce large-scale mural projects. Our two staffs now meet regularly to share ideas, pool resources, and generate exciting new opportunities to serve communities and audiences around the state. Rooted in our mutual mandates to share the wealth of UI’s creative, academic, and scientific expertise across the state, our partnership has flourished into a farreaching collaboration that will only continue to grow in the coming years. Vero Rose Smith discusses archival methods in the Stanley Visual Classroom. Phots: Maura Pilcher

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Lindley Warren Mickunas

hen Lindley Warren Mickunas (BFA ’18) was a student at the University of Iowa, she simply had to take Chief Curator Joyce Tsai’s “Museum Without Walls” class. “I only had room in my schedule for my required courses,” she said, and Joyce’s didn’t count. But Warren Mickunas took it anyway—“and I’m really thankful I did.” That course paved the way for her to become Joyce’s research fellow through the ICRU (Iowa Center for Research by Undergraduates). After her graduation in 2018, she became the Program Assistant for the Intermedia Research Initiative at the Stanley and then Joyce’s curatorial assistant. She’s since done everything from putting together a photography collections plan to writing metadata on obscure art videos. But when she thinks back, it all started with that class. “We would do things like go on class walks and interview individuals involved in the history of Intermedia at Iowa both in the classroom Photo: Annick Sjobakken and on field trips,” she said, “Our discussions felt open and very much in the spirit of Intermedia. It felt very alive.” Warren Mickunas had been an independent curator for several years before joining the Stanley Museum staff, but she says her time at the Stanley helped her learn how the curation process happens within an institution. “Through attending curatorial meetings, going on trips with the Stanley staff to learn about other museums in the country, and assisting the curators, I have learned a lot about how to present myself in a professional museum setting,” she says. “I’ve gotten to know which things are of greatest importance to an art museum.” One of her favorite projects to 24

help organize with curators was Heidi Wiren Bartlett’s Downriver, an artwork the museum commissioned. Downriver combines performance, video, and photography, and was filmed in part in the sculpture court in the Old Museum of Art. Warren Mickunas helped manage the logistics of this complicated and wide-ranging project, ensuring Heidi’s performance would go off without a hitch. Filming took place in June 2019, which coincided with the eleventh anniversary of the Iowa flood. “Heidi’s performance is especially interesting,” she said, “because she’s blending together her personal history, ritual, and the story of the Iowa River. Forward-thinking and contemporary art are a big part of the Stanley’s history, and commissioning Heidi is one way we’re continuing that legacy.” In Fall 2019, Warren Mickunas will move to Chicago to begin an MFA in Photography at Columbia College Chicago. While there, she’ll work as a curatorial assistant at the Museum of Contemporary Photography. When asked how her time at the Stanley has prepared her for her next steps, she emphasized the value of her hands-on museum experience. “When I had my interviews, the fact that I was able to tell them about my professional experience at the Stanley went a long way. Many incoming graduate students don’t have experience working at a museum, so they were really pleased to hear about the ways that I am prepared to become a useful addition to their team.” As she prepares to take her experience at the Stanley with her to graduate school, she reflected on her path growing from student, to intern and student research assistant, and now curatorial assistant. “I am deeply thankful for all of the experience I’ve had while at the Stanley, and I’m proud to have had this opportunity to assist a curator that I admire. In a multitude of ways, The Stanley has paved the way for my future work.” s tanley m u s e u m o f a rt

Cory Gundlach

you’ve visited the Stanley Visual Classroom (SVC) lately, you might not have noticed the glass-fronted cabinet mounted against the south wall when you first entered. As you move around the gallery, however, the contents of that cabinet are so immediately striking that—if you’re anything like me—you were instantly drawn over. Curated by Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas Curator Cory Gundlach, the display features 72 Yoruba ibeji twin figures, arranged in tight pairs facing the viewer. It’s “an immersive experience,” Gundlach says, to see so many figures so close together. One of his reasons for displaying the figures this way is to highlight the diversity among these objects, which helps point to the cultural diversity among the Yoruba peoples who created them. Another benefit, he says, is the visual impact. “The beauty of the collection to me is stunning, and to view it en masse nears a Photo: Steve Erickson confrontation with the sublime.” The J. Richard Simon Collection of Yoruba figures was left to the museum in 2017 after Dick Simon’s passing. Several other local patrons of African art have passed recently, including Dick and Mary Jo Stanley, whose name the museum now bears, and Dr. Christopher Roy, UI Professor of Art History and noted scholar of African art. Dr. Roy was also Gundlach’s dissertation advisor at UI. “However I approach an exhibit,” he said, “I owe my love for the beauty and power of African art to Chris.” Gundlach’s exhibitions at the SVC would often deliberately correspond to themes addressed in Dr. Roy’s courses in African art history, such as initiation, leadership, European encounters, fa ll 20 19

staff spotlight and gender. “Chris’s passing occurs at a time in which the field of African art history at large has lost a number of other titans,” he reflects. “With their passing comes a generational shift in African art history that is nevertheless indebted to historical foundations these scholars provided.” He says the ibeji collection, displayed alongside the museum’s other African objects in the Stanley collection, “stands as a clear testament to how important Iowa is in the world of African art.” Looking forward, he intends to focus on acquiring more contemporary art from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, and he is utilizing 3D modeling software to plan the inaugural installation in the new building. Another kind of 3D-imaging recently played an important role in his work—in Spring 2019, Gundlach and other Stanley staff members collaborated with Dr. Eric Hoffman and his staff at the UI Advanced Pulmonary Physiomic Imaging Laboratory to perform CT scans of African art objects. This enabled Gundlach to see substances or objects placed inside power figures, and to identify the way certain objects were constructed. In Fall 2019 he will present on this collaboration, which he hopes is only the start of a fruitful relationship between the Stanley and the Department of Radiology at UI. In anticipation of the new building, he emphasizes this same kind of collaborative spirit will be on full display. “If I can reveal anything about what you should expect to see in the new museum,” he says, “it is a new way of looking at things. This is what helps to keep museum collections alive.”

Joyce Tsai Joyce Tsai’s time at the UI Stanley Museum of Art has been characterized by a deeply collaborative focus. These collaborations have taken many shapes—from Dada Futures, the 2018–19 Stanley Visual Classroom exhibition, which involved faculty in the UI English Department and Special Collections, to this fall’s exhibition on Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes’s The Disasters of War, held in conjunction with an exhibition at Special Collections, a larger Iowa City celebration of Leo Tolstoy, and faculty across CLAS. Her promotion to chief curator at the Stanley will see her expand the reach and potential of these partnerships. Her approach draws from the deep history of excellence at the University of Iowa, exemplified by the achievements of the Intermedia program. Here at UI, “artistic practices have benefitted from the interdisciplinary structure of the research university for generations.” She sees the university museum as an “incubator of ideas that haven’t been explored within the parameters of traditional institutional spaces.” She continues, “Going forward, all the work I do has to do vetted intellectual work, it has to have a deep lasting impact, and it has to bring new people in, while also making the museum a welcoming space.”

“Museums create opportunities that allow us to reimagine our world, illuminate the achievements and failings of our past and present, and forge shared spaces of discovery.” joyce tsai

Tsai says getting students involved in this work is a priority. “I think of students as coauthors,” she says. “At a research university, where co-authors are quite normal in the

Joyce Tsai in the Old Museum of Art sculpture court on the set of Heidi Wiren Bartlett’s performance commission, Downriver. Photo: Karla Conrad 26

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staff spotlight social sciences and hard sciences, I’m trying to develop new models of humanities research.” Over the past few years, Tsai created a research lab with graduate and undergraduate research assistants as a part of the Intermedia Research Initiative who worked to create a digital discovery tool to help researchers locate avantgarde videos. These videos were made in multiple contexts—as teaching materials, performance documentation, and even broadcast programs. Working with the Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio at UI Library, Tsai and her students have created a proof of concept and have presented at peer-reviewed conferences in the digital humanities. Her interns at the Stanley have also contributed significantly to major projects she is developing; she says it’s important for curators to acknowledge intern work in their presentations and published work, and makes it a point to do so herself. Tsai says she’s honored to assume the dual roles of chief curator and associate professor of practice in the School of Art and Art History at a time when museums and their values are being redefined. “Museums create opportunities,” she says, “that allow us to reimagine our world, illuminate the achievements and failings of our past and present, and forge shared spaces of discovery.” This October, the Stanley will partner with the Center for Afrofuturist Studies to present the “Black Curators’ Roundtable” at the Iowa City Public Library. In March 2020, Tsai will codirect the Obermann Center for Advanced Study’s Humanities Symposium entitled “What Can Museums Become?” Both of these events will bring renowned curators, artists, teachers, and practitioners to Iowa City to address head-on the future of art museums. “It’s exhilarating to bring these perspectives to bear as we prepare for the new museum building,” Tsai says. fa ll 20 19

Conservation work has been a focus of Tsai’s work since she was a graduate student, where she worked as a curatorial intern at the National Gallery of Art. “The artworks I researched there,” she says, “were so much more than slides or digital images; I learned from curators and conservators how much their material presence changes over time and how that impacts our understanding of their meaning. Working in a museum allowed me to see artworks anew, to inscribe them in contexts resonant with the challenges of our moment, and to understand how our care for them transforms how we perceive them.” As chief curator, she hopes to make that same experience accessible to the Stanley’s audiences. Currently, Tsai is working with conservation scientists to better understand changes to paint at the molecular level. “These are material problems,” she says, “that involve the expertise of chemists, physicists, and computer scientists to really track and visualize what’s going on with these works. The science aspect of it always happens in conversation with the expertise curators provide.” Several Stanley internships, which are filled by students from the School of Art and Art History, have been devoted to researching the conservation histories of objects in the museum’s collection. “These conservation histories,” Tsai says, “ actually inform how we approach the care of these objects going forward, and the kind of research questions that might be answered over the course of their care.” She says her role as faculty member gives her an important perspective as chief curator, in that she considers what opportunities she would want a museum to provide her and her students. “My split perspective keeps me embedded in the research and pedagogical mission of a research university.”

50th Anniversary Gala Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the Stanley Museum of Artâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fiftieth anniversary year and we are celebrating with our community of supporters all year long. This spring, the Stanley Members Council organized two events to mark this milestone.

Photos: Barry Phipps

The elegant 50th Anniversary Gala was held on April 13 at the Hilton Garden Inn. The evening included the Museum of Art Awards presented to Waswo X. Waswo, Phyllis and George Lance, Jude Langhurst, Joyce Summerwill, and the late Professor Christopher Roy. Other highlights were video greetings from past University of Iowa presidents, major museum supporters, and current UI President J. Bruce Harreld; a musical tribute to our supporters; and the thrilling announcement of the ceremonial groundbreaking date for our new museum.

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Steins for Stanley On June 6, the evening before the groundbreaking ceremony, 300 guests enjoyed our Steins for Stanley event held at Big Grove Brewery, Iowa City. This benefit for Stanley programming featured The Nadas with Dave Zollo & The Body Electric, a trivia game, a peek at objects from our traveling education collections, and souvenir glass beer steins. It was a relaxed, fun evening with suds, sounds, and lots of museum friends. Photos, clockwise from top: John Moyers, Dan Rolling, John Moyers, Dan Rolling

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We thank all of our generous 50th Anniversary year event supporters: Signature Sponsor