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STAN L E Y M US EU M .U IOWA.EDU Editor: Elizabeth M. Wallace Editorial Team: Rebecca Hanssens-Reed and Derek Nnuro Design: Benson & Hepker Design Copyright © 2021
STANLEY MUSEUM OFART
TEMPORARY OFFICES
OLD MUSEUM OF ART BUILDING 150 N. Riverside Drive OMA 100 Iowa City, IA 52242 By appointment 319-335-1727 stanley-museum@uiowa.edu
TEMPORARY LOCATION
FIGGE ART MUSEUM 225 West Second Street Davenport, IA 52801 563-326-7804 Free admission for University of Iowa students, faculty, and staff with UI ID cards and SMA members with membership cards By reservation Hours Tuesday–Saturday 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Thursday: 10 a.m.–9 p.m. Sunday: 12–5 p.m.
THANK YOU
to our magazine sponsors John R. Menninger Ellen M. Widiss
Angola; Chokwe artist Drum Wood, animal skins 18 7/8 x 13 x 13 in. (47.94 x 33.02 x 33.02 cm) Gift of Mr. Raymond Wielgus, 1960.15
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COVER Peju Layiwola in front of her Leitmotif, 2019, featured in the exhibition Indigo Reimagined, June 13–July 30, 2019. J.F. Ade Ajayi Auditorium Gallery, University of Lagos, Nigeria Photo by Sulayman Afose
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CALENDAR OF EVENTS
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DIRECTOR’S WELCOME
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REIMAGINING RITUAL AND STYLE Symposium Overview Speaker Profiles
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LEARNING AND ENGAGEMENT Stanley Reads smART Talk & Saturdays at the Stanley Stanley Creates
24 BECOME A STANLEY DOCENT
18 HOW TO MOVE A COLLECTION
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20 CONSTRUCTION UPDATE
28 ART FOR ALL
MEET MASON
STANLEY SPOTLIGHTS Jennifer (Otis) Miller Alice Gisler Riley Hanick Danielle Hoskins
30 FROM THE UI CENTER FOR ADVANCEMENT See Yourself as a Stanley Member From the Director of Development
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STAN L E Y M US EU M .U IOWA.EDU
STANLEYMUSEUMOFART EXHIBITIONS
As we prepare to move the museum’s collection to our new home in 2022, all current exhibitions will remain on extended view.
CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC
Stanley Visual Classroom, Iowa Memorial Union
ONGOING
Pollinators, Figge Art Museum
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
*Registration required, see links below
SEPTEMBER 17
11:00 a.m.
Zoom smART Talk with Rachel Marie-Crane Williams, Associate Professor in the School of Art & Art History and Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies, and Program Head Painting and Drawing. Professor Williams will discuss her recently published graphic novel, Run Home If You Don’t Want to Be Killed: The Detroit Uprising of 1943.
SEPTEMBER 20
7:00 p.m.
Zoom* Stanley Reads Book Club, The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea presented in partnership with Prairie Lights Books. Register: https://tinyurl.com/StanleyReads
OCTOBER 2, 21 NOVEMBER 11
Symposium: “Reimagining Ritual and Style in African Art.” Dr. Cory Gundlach will facilitate this series of online events via Zoom. Each event will feature two to three twenty-minute presentations from panelists who will then join in a roundtable discussion. Free and open to all. Please visit our website for registration details.
OCTOBER 18
7:00 p.m.
Zoom* Stanley Reads Book Club, The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea presented in partnership with Prairie Lights Books. Register: https://tinyurl.com/StanleyReads
OCTOBER 23
2:00 p.m.
Zoom* Stanley Creates, Coffee Painting with Lauren Linahon, MA candidate in Art Education Register: https://tinyurl.com/StanleyCreates
NOVEMBER 5
5:00 p.m.
Englert Theatre Moebius Strips Exhibition Conversation, Lauren Lessing in conversation with Tim Story and his collaborators of the exhibition
NOVEMBER 6
2:00 p.m.
Zoom Saturdays at the Stanley, Graphic Novels and Social Justice with Joshua Siefken, Associate Curator of Education
NOVEMBER 15
7:00 p.m.
Zoom* Stanley Reads Book Club, The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea, presented in partnership with Prairie Lights Books. Register: https://tinyurl.com/StanleyReads
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What a world of difference a year—or even six months—can make. Over the past summer, as I reconnected with friends in Iowa City’s many parks, restaurants, theaters, and bookstores, I was reminded of how very lucky I am to live in this vibrant, art-loving community. I was also delighted to see students stop in their tracks as they walked across the University of Iowa’s campus to look up at a beautiful, nearly complete art museum building—one made possible by the faith, generosity, and commitment of hundreds of loyal friends, alumni, and art lovers in Iowa and around the country. In just a few months, we will begin filling that new museum with the Stanley’s celebrated collection. Around this time next year, we will proudly open the museum’s doors and welcome you in.
Photo by Uri Lessing
The Stanley staff is hard at work preparing for that incredible moment. More than half of the museum’s collection is now packed, moved, and ready to install. Our inaugural exhibition has been thoughtfully planned. We are now in the midst of writing wall texts and gallery labels, planning programs in partnership with faculty, artists, student clubs, and community organizations in Iowa, and conserving our outdoor sculptures. In the past six months, we have also acquired new artworks that will help us tell a more expansive story about the complex history and meanings of the art in our collection. These include works by contemporary artists Taiye Idahor and Abdoulaye Konaté, who create eloquent art rooted in African cultural traditions, and a portfolio of photographs by the seminal and brilliant performance artist Lorraine O’Grady, who attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in the 1970s. Over the course of 2020, the museum developed online programs that allowed us to engage people far away from Iowa City. What began as a stopgap measure to keep our audiences connected during the pandemic has resulted in a broader reach and a more inclusive museum community. Recognizing this, we will continue offering online programming during the busy year ahead and beyond. The Stanley’s new, free membership program will also help our audiences feel included and connected. I want everyone—our old friends and our new ones—to be able to see themselves at the Stanley, and to discover, inquire, collaborate, and create with us. Warmly,
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Reimagining Rit Last year we witnessed worldwide calls for cultural industries to re-envision their entrenched standards of practice. Museums—which had already experienced multiple evolutions since their beginnings in the early modern period as institutions for storing “collections of curiosities”— were especially at an inflection point. In response, museum directors and curators confronted questions of representation, equity, and social justice. At the Stanley Museum of Art, curators are continuing to explore these questions in many ways, including through an inaugural exhibition, History is Always Now, that will open to the public in September 2022. Ahead of the inaugural, the Stanley’s Curator of African Arts, Dr. Cory Gundlach, will facilitate a series of online events this fall titled “Reimagining Ritual and Style in African Art.” With major support from the Interdisciplinary Project for Advanced Study of Art and Life in Africa (PASALA), these panel discussions will bring together a diverse group of scholars and artists in the field of African art. According to Gundlach, the Stanley’s literal repositioning to a new building in downtown Iowa City, alongside a metaphorical one focused on re-animating its collections, offers the museum a unique opportunity to reconsider its collection of historical African art, one of the largest in the country. He notes, “we [must] take stock of life, our values, and our norms.”
Taiye Idahor Taiwo (Ivie series), 2020 Giclee print collage, pen drawing, acrylic paint and colored pencil on paper 112 x 80 cm Collection of the artist © Taiye Idahor
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Gundlach will moderate three online events anchored by a central question: “With special attention to ritual and style in historical and/ or contemporary art from Africa and the African diaspora, how must we comport ourselves to the [conditions] of our research and practice today?” Each event will feature two to three twenty-minute presentations from panelists who will then join in a roundtable discussion.
STAN S TANLEY LE Y M MUS U SE UM U M O F A RT
ual and Style Re-thinking the Canon, the first of the three events, is shaped by the recognition that “scholarly approaches and canons change over time in response to changing values, responsibilities, and needs.” What, then, does the African canon look like in a world forever changed after 2020? What new possibilities are there that allow us to consider the African diaspora as a context for viewing the African canon? How do associated histories among artworks re-constitute the canon and help us see it anew? The second event, New Directions in Practice and Performance, will address innovations of creation and interpretation including, for example, ways in which artists are changing conceptions of the longstanding artistic traditions of pottery and textiles, which are important portals for exploring shifting paradigms of taste, teaching, and scholarship in African art history. Performative dimensions of contemporary artistic practice in Africa will also be explored, while interrogating ideas of “old” and “new.” The final event, Museum Interventions, will explore the potential for the museum to be a source for good. Together with panelists, Gundlach will probe the institution’s power to answer to youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman’s appeal that “the norms and notions / of what just is / Isn’t always just-ice….” How might the museum harness the power of its collections? Can it serve as a conduit for a just world, with sensitivity towards the often-fraught histories behind African artworks?
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REIMAGINING RITUAL AND STYLE RETHINKING THE CANON
OCTOBER 2 SYLVESTER OGBECHIE Sylvester Ogbechie is a professor of art history at University of California, Santa Barbara. Ogbechie specializes in the arts and visual culture of Africa and its diasporas, especially in terms of how art history discourses create value for African cultural patrimony in the age of globalization. He is the author of Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist (University of Rochester Press, 2008: winner of the 2009 Herskovits Prize of the African Studies Association for best scholarly publication in African studies), Making History: The Femi Akinsanya African Art Collection (Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2011), and editor of Artists of Nigeria (Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2012). He is the director of Aachron Knowledge Systems, and founder and editor of Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture. Sylvester Ogbechie’s research considers several questions: how do we liberate our knowledge work from the stranglehold of colonial/imperial epistemologies? What is our current knowledge about African art for and who benefits from it? He investigates these concerns under the rubric of “Rethinking African Art History,” which he will present as a protocol for decolonizing knowledge about Africa’s past, present, and future.
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REIMAGINING RITUAL AND STYLE RETHINKING THE CANON
REIMAGINING RITUAL AND STYLE RETHINKING THE CANON
OCTOBER 2 YAËLLE BIRO
OCTOBER 2 SUSAN ELIZABETH GAGLIARDI
Photo by Antoine Tempé
Yaëlle (“Yah-ell”) Biro has worked at The Metropolitan Museum of Art since 2007. She earned her PhD at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, with a dissertation focused on the reception of African art in the West during the first decades of the twentieth century, work for which she was awarded the Dissertation Prize of the Musée du Quai Branly. Among her most recent exhibitions are The Face of Dynasty: Royal Crests from Western Cameroon (2017) and In and Out of the Studio: Photographic Portraits from West Africa (2016). In 2012 her exhibition African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde received the AAMC Small Exhibition Award of Excellence. Yaëlle Biro’s presentation will investigate the shaping of African arts canon through the lens of materiality, with a focus on works in gold. Considering the turn of the twentieth century as a highly politically charged moment of heightened visibility of African works in Europe, Biro will explore the oscillating positions of gold works from West Africa within the corpus of the continent’s visual forms of expression.
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Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi is an associate professor of African art history at Emory University. Gagliardi has conducted more than thirty months of fieldwork in rural West African communities, scoured archives in Africa, Europe, and North America, and also analyzed objects in collections on the same three continents. She is the author of Senufo Unbound: Dynamics of Art and Identity in West Africa (The Cleveland Museum of Art and 5 Continents Editions, 2015). Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi will consider how we have arrived at what we think we know about the arts of Africa. Viewing knowledge production as a process rather than an endpoint, she will propose alternate possibilities for approaches that can be taken within and beyond museums.
Cote d’Ivoire; Snufo artist Jar lid, female figure, n.d. Wood, metal 12 1/2 x 5 x 3 3/4 in. (31.75 x 12.7 x 9.53 cm) The Stanley Collection of African Art, X1986.345
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Donté K. Hayes Double Consciousness, 2019 Ceramic (black clay body) 16.5 x 13 x 9 in. Collection of the artist Photo by Donté K. Hayes 10
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Photo by The University of Iowa
REIMAGINING RITUAL AND STYLE NEW DIRECTIONS IN PRACTICE AND PERFORMANCE
REIMAGINING RITUAL AND STYLE NEW DIRECTIONS IN PRACTICE AND PERFORMANCE
OCTOBER 21 DONTÉ K. HAYES
OCTOBER 21 ALLEN F. ROBERTS
Donté K. Hayes graduated summa cum laude from Kennesaw State University at Kennesaw, Georgia, with a BFA in Ceramics and Printmaking with an Art History minor. Hayes received his MA and MFA with honors from the University of Iowa and is the 2017 recipient of the University of Iowa Arts Fellowship. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; The Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas. Hayes is a 2019 Ceramics Monthly Magazine Emerging Artist and Artaxis Fellow and the 2019 winner of the 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art from the Gibbes Museum of Art.
Allen F. Roberts is the Distinguished Professor of World Arts and Cultures/ Dance at University of California, Los Angeles, and an affiliated professor of French and Francophone Studies. Dr. Roberts conducted research, organized museum exhibitions, wrote books and articles, and often co-taught with his late spouse, WACD Professor Mary “Polly” Nooter Roberts (1959–2018). Allen Roberts’ most significant scholarly products have been museum exhibitions and accompanying books, with eight major exhibitions supported by NEH implementation grants based upon or directly impacted by his research.
Donté K. Hayes’ research has been focused on the pineapple as a symbol which represents welcoming and hospitality, rooted in slavery and agricultural colonization of South America, the Caribbean, and the Southern United States, particularly South Carolina and his home state of Georgia. In addition to this research, his art practice pulls from his interest in hip-hop culture, history, and science fiction. Hayes will present on his research and art practice, with a focus on how they suggest the past, discuss the present, and explore possible futures interconnected to the African diaspora.
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Photo courtesy Fowler Museum at UCLA
In Yinka Elujoba’s recent New York Times review of the accomplishments of the celebrated African American artist/musician/ filmmaker Lonnie Holley, emphasis is given to how Mr. Holley repurposes found objects into vital assemblages. “It’s about the brain,” he holds, the “same brain that produces the music produces the visual art. Allen F. Roberts calls it ‘brainsmithing’.” For some decades now, Senegalese artists have also been “brainsmithing” as they create engaging works from detritus. Roberts’ talk will focus on this practice and is based upon twenty years of research that he and his late spouse, Dr. Mary “Polly” Nooter Roberts, undertook for the prize-winning book A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal.
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REIMAGINING RITUAL AND STYLE NEW DIRECTIONS IN PRACTICE AND PERFORMANCE
OCTOBER 21 NNENNA OKORE Nnenna (“Neh-nuh”) Okore (“Okoray”) is a professor of art at North Park University, Chicago. She has a BA in Painting from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and both an MA and MFA from the University of Iowa. She is a 2012 Fulbright Award recipient and has exhibited internationally. Her works have been featured in several important exhibitions such as Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary, Museum of Arts and Design, New York City; We Face Forward, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, United Kingdom; Africa Africans, Museu Afro Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil; and When the Heavens Meet the Earth, The Heong Gallery, Cambridge, United Kingdom. In 2018 her major installation, Sheer Audacity, was exhibited at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, Tennessee. Her work is in many international collections, including the World Bank, Washington, DC, among others. Nnenna Okore’s creative practice straddles elements of African aesthetics and practices of call-and-response. This presentation will speak to aspects of the African materialist and participatory practices that influence Okore’s own works and pedagogical thinking. Okore will draw on historical references and memories of different African canonical art to illustrate how these influences shape, provoke, and enliven a material-bodily dynamic in her creative works.
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REIMAGINING RITUAL AND STYLE MUSEUM INTERVENTIONS
NOVEMBER 11 BENNETTA JULES-ROSETTE
Nnenna Okore Nkata, 2015 Burlap, cheesecloth, paper, jute rope, glass, wire, dye, and video 40 x 30 x 12 Collection of the artist
Nnenna Okore Emissaries, 2011 Handmade paper, dye, yarn, and burlap Varied dimensions Collection of the artist FA LL 20 2 1
Bennetta Jules-Rosette is professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego and Director of the African and African-American Studies Research Center. She received her BA (Summa Cum Laude) in Social Relations from Radcliffe College and her MA (1970) and PhD (1973) from Harvard University in Social Relations (Sociology and Anthropology). Professor JulesRosette’s research interests include contemporary African art and literature, semiotic studies of Black Paris, religious discourse, new technologies in Africa, and museum studies. JulesRosette and J.R. Osborn are co-authors of African Art Reframed: Reflections and Dialogues on Museum Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2020). The book offers a “sociosemiotic” study of museums as institutions as well as suggestions for museum transformations. In her presentation, Bennetta Jules-Rosette will discuss the book’s nodal model of museum classification. The five nodes are ideal types of museum organization based on historical and empirical observations that transcend stylistic and aesthetic idiolects. Nodes contrast the goals, classification and storage practices, exhibition strategies, and outreach activities of diverse museums. Jules-Rosette will also discuss the ramifications of the nodal model for the repatriation and restitution of artifacts as well as their implications for museum development on both the African continent and worldwide.
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REIMAGINING RITUAL AND STYLE MUSEUM INTERVENTIONS
REIMAGINING RITUAL AND STYLE MUSEUM INTERVENTIONS
NOVEMBER 11 J.R. OSBORN
NOVEMBER 11 PEJU LAYIWOLA
Photo by Phil Humnicky
J.R. Osborn is an associate professor in the Communication, Culture, and Technology program at Georgetown University. Osborn is a scholar and experimentalist of communication. His work explores media history, design, semiotics, communication technologies, and aesthetics with a regional focus of the Middle East and Africa. Osborn and Bennetta Jules-Rosette are coauthors of African Art Reframed: Reflections and Dialogues on Museum Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2020). The book offers a “sociosemiotic” study of museums as institutions as well as suggestions for museum transformations. The authors approach the reframing of African art through dialogues with curators, collectors, and artists across three continents, and they have given workshops on the book for academics, students, and museum professionals. J.R. Osborn’s presentation will discuss the theory and method of “unmixing.” Unmixing encompasses the location and separation of semiotic and stylistic elements that compose an artwork. This method enables practices of curatorial contextualization, artistic interpretation, audience perception, and community dialogue. Taken together, these paired presentations propose new approaches for interpreting African art across the nodal categories and remixing the results.
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Photo by Sulayman Afose
Peju Layiwola is an artist, professor of art history and head of the Department of Creative Arts, University of Lagos. She is a member of the board of the Lagos Studies Association. She is currently the President-elect and Vice President of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association, USA. She works in a variety of media and focuses on personal and communal histories which centralize Benin as both an ancient kingdom and a contemporary city. Layiwola’s dual heritage of Yoruba and Benin informs her art in diverse ways. Peju Layiwola will consider the role and concept of the museum in Benin City. She will touch on her art projects in the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Köln (Resist! the Art of Resistance) and her 2014 Whose Centenary. The former will show how artists engage with ethnographic materials that derive from a traumatic history, and the latter, a public art project that activates a cultural space and allows for the appreciation of visual arts in the African context where art/objects are not confined to vitrine glass cases but are appreciated and consumed within a community.
Peju Layiwola 1897.com, installation view, 2009–2010 Terracotta, animal horn, paper, beads, inlaid brass and copper, variable sizes; display of 1,000 heads Image courtesy of the artist © Peju Layiwola S TANLEY M U S E U M O F A RT
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Meet Mason, Provenance Detective and Renaissance Man Mason Koelm chose to attend the University of Iowa for its promise of a cross-disciplinary experience. As he puts it, “Nowhere else offered the diversity of programs that I wanted to explore.” For Koelm, the most interesting aspect of academia is the opportunity to connect various fields, an ethos reflected in the broad range of extracurricular activities he’s engaged with over his lifetime. He has expertise— though he admits to being Photo by Elizabeth Wallace out of practice—in six musical instruments, not counting a voice refined by classical training in opera. Add to that fencing club, mock trial, academic decathlon and quiz bowl, as well as several event hosting duties at the UI. Koelm is a bona fide Renaissance man. It would come as no surprise if he were one day said to be preparing for space travel. Until then, Koelm continues to amaze in his earthly endeavors. This year, his cross-disciplinary undergraduate journey at the University of Iowa came to a fitting close: a BA in International Relations, a BS in Criminology, Law, and Justice, and a minor in Anthropology. There’s also a certificate in museum studies to account for, a course of study that culminated in his eight-month tenure as Curatorial Assistant for Provenance Research at the Stanley Museum of Art.
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Koelm’s passion for museums traces back to his childhood. “I grew up in Cedar Rapids, but I’m originally from St. Louis and visited the latter frequently growing up,” he says. “Visiting the St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri History Museum, and especially the St. Louis Zoo gave me a huge appreciation of these institutions and their educational mission. Whenever I go on vacation, visiting museums, especially of local history, is a priority for me.” Students pursuing museum studies certificates at the UI are encouraged to intern at a museum or other cultural institution with significant collections. During Koelm’s first internship he worked with a team putting together a tribal summit funded by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Grant. His duties included investigating over 30,000 unassociated funerary objects found at over 100 archaeological sites across the state of Iowa. “I determined whether such sites contained mortuary features and whether the objects may have been found near or in these features,” he elaborates. His work is currently featured in the Office of the Vice President for Research’s Dare to Discover Campaign. At the Stanley, Koelm worked closely with Curator of African Arts Cory Gundlach to identify the origins of objects in the African Art collection. It could be S TANLEY M U S E U M O F A RT
STAFF SPOTLIGHT said that this work was destined. “My freshman year, I took Dr. Chris Roy’s Arts of Africa class as an elective because I knew next to nothing about the topic and wanted to learn more,” he says. “While I was by no means an expert in African Art after taking the class, the broader lessons of art as constantly evolving and the appreciation of other cultures stuck with me.” Hear Koelm explain provenance research and you’d think he’s been doing it for decades. “Provenance research is like detective work in many ways,” he says. “I look for potential leads: similar objects, correspondence from the dealer in institutional files, publications that cite the item, exhibition catalogs, journals, or anything that could possibly shed light on the earlier ownership or whereabouts of the object.” One case study he highlights is the Benin Hip Mask, or uhunmwun-ekue, and it quickly becomes clear why Koelm is a sought-after event host—he is a riveting storyteller. “I was looking at about a halfdozen other similar objects, noting any similarities I could in the ornamentation, dimensions, and style of the objects,” he teases. What follows ought to be written into the next Indiana Jones script: “I found a near-exact match at the Penn Museum, and found that it was sold by a dealer named William Ockleford Oldman. His sale and collection records happen to be available on the Smithsonian Institute’s Open Access. Looking through them, there were two masks with the same description collected and sold at the same time to the Penn Museum, with one of them matching the dealer number for the piece I had noticed in their online collection. After exchanging emails with the keeper of African Arts at the Penn Museum, I found that the other Oldman mask was not ours. I thought I had a solid lead and
had to consult dozens of resources just to get there. But such an experience is not a complete loss: I had established a connection with another museum professional, become more familiar with online archives and collections, and definitively disproved a lead, saving time for myself and other researchers in the future.” Koelm presented his research to museum staff. In addition to reporting on the nuances of his work, Koelm, who also studied the laws of African countries represented in the Stanley’s collection, outlined some best practices when a work is determined to require repatriation. One example, he points out, is the return of the Euphronios Krater to Italy by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. “As an industry, I see museums moving to further global cooperation. Restoring ownership claims is a symbolic restitution, and the Krater remained on display at the Met for over a year, in addition to several long-term loans being extended to the Met for their return of other Italian objects. [Such] cooperative restoration could serve as a model by which institutions can right historic wrongs, destroy colonial power structures, and still bring a piece of the world to a smaller community.” What’s next for already multi-degreed Mason Koelm? His first semester at the University of Iowa College of Law this fall. “I’m excited to be sticking around so I can see the opening of the new art museum,” he says. His vision for a future career? “There are some fantastic lawyers out there who prosecute art traffickers and facilitate repatriations,” he notes. “On the other side, I could be a private investigator or provenance researcher, continuing my work, and hopefully traveling in a world sans pandemic.”
“Provenance research is like detective work in many ways. I look for potential leads: similar objects, correspondence from the dealer in institutional files, publications that cite the item, exhibition catalogs, journals, or anything that could possibly shed light on the earlier ownership or whereabouts of the object.” MASON KOELM FA LL 20 2 1
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How to Move a Collection:
Many Hands
How many pairs of hands does it take to move a collection? In the case of the Stanley Museum of Art, an eight-member team of registrars and preparators has assembled to navigate the complexities of moving the collection to the new building. Manager of Collections & Exhibitions Katherine Wilson is the project manager. Her role is to organize data, plan the various stages of the move—which objects are packed when—and to stay a step ahead of the team, ensuring they have everything needed to address a new collection. Registrars Sara Luko and Sayuri Sasaki Hemann pull objects from storage, tag or label each object, and take note of the physical condition. The move is an excellent opportunity for the moving team to gather information missing from the object’s record, such as storage needs, dimensions, and handling and installation instructions. After the object is packed and ready to move, registrars record its location, guaranteeing an accurate inventory. Once a registrar has completed their work on an object, it is handed off to the preparators. The artwork will be assigned to a specific preparator to ensure it is being packed by the most suitable individual. While the entire team has the skills to pack any type of art, work is assigned according to each team member’s strengths. Nearly all the preparators have a degree in fine arts, an education that helps them understand the nature of each object and what potential weaknesses are inherent in each art form. Manager of Design, Preparation & Installation Steve Erickson and Ariana Santana Flores—who previously worked 18
for a national fine art moving company—handle the most complex and fragile objects as they both have the most years of experience packing artwork. Alexandra Janezic and Zoe Webb are highly experienced in working with paper and archives. Charles Williams is new to the team and is training with each preparator to find his preferred medium. Sayuri Hemann occasionally lends a hand with packing as she is a former preparator for the Stanley Museum of Art. When a preparator receives an object, they create an action plan for the piece, consulting with the rest of the team if unsure of the best approach. Once the object is packed, the box is labeled with preprinted stickers and a registrar then determines where the artwork will go next. For example, if the work will appear in the museum’s inaugural exhibition, it will be stored with other inaugural objects so that they remain together ahead of their installation in the new building. The work area at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, where the majority of the collection is stored, is set up so each team member has an individual space to do their work. There is a central station for cutting large pieces of foam and cardboard, along with two hot gluing stations. Packing supplies like boxes, bags, and foam are located within easy access of each team member. To maximize efficiency the team packs artworks of similar size and material simultaneously. This allows the team to focus on one packing style at a time. To date, half the collection is packed, including almost every painting in the collection. S TANLEY M U S E U M O F A RT
LOOKING FORWARD
Photos by Steve Erickson
Current efforts are being focused on paper and ceramics. Unframed works on paper pack quickly as they are already stored in solander boxes, requiring only the addition of padding to prevent works from shifting in transport. Ceramics require a more elaborate process, as each piece requires careful examination to determine the most appropriate packing method. FA LL 20 2 1
Over the course of the next year, Katherine, Steve, Sarah, Alexandra, Sayuri, Ariana, Zoe, and Charles will safely shepherd these objects, now scattered across multiple storage locations, back to Iowa City. The Stanley Museum of Art is very fortunate to have this dedicated team working on this multiyear project.
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Clockwise: Stanley Museum of Art lightwell by Levi Robb Third-floor hallway by Elizabeth Wallace View from the northeast offices by Justin Torner
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LOOKING FORWARD
Construction update: Let there be light
Construction is almost complete on the Stanley Museum of Art, with only a few months to go. The finishing work is speeding along, and museum staff will begin occupancy in early 2022. Just as there is finally light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, so real daylight now shines into the building through 15,438 square feet of glass, or a total number of 552 pieces. The large glass façade is integral to the interior experience, bringing the outside in and providing both literal and figurative transparency to campus and the community. At the core of the museum, the threestory lightwell sheds light on the adjacent main staircase and connects and centers visitors. The glass throughout the building is low-iron, meaning it is clearer than typical glass, which has a green hue to it. Keeping the light white means the interior spaces are “true color” and not tinted. Additionally, key window areas include a blocking filter that prevents UV light from entering the building. The window systems, manufactured by Oldcastle Building Envelope and installed by Forman-Ford, have varying thickness based on the gravity and wind loads they will be subjected to. Window depths throughout the building range from 2 3/4 to 10 7/8 inches. The thinnest windows are at the entrance, with the deeper windows surrounding the south terrace on level three.
The building has
15,438 square feet of glass and
26,114
linear feet of window mullion.
Since construction began in 2019, you’ve viewed the building throughout its progress from the outside. We can’t wait to shift your perspective and show you our new home from the inside. Our next construction update will feature the work staff is doing in preparation for welcoming you when the Stanley Museum of Art opens to the public on September 2, 2022. See you then! FA LLL 20 FAL 2 02 1
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Stanley Reads The House of Broken Angels by Luis Albero Urrea Stanley Reads continues this fall with Luis Alberto Urrea’s National Best Seller The House of Broken Angels (2018). The novel follows the De La Cruz family across two days and through death and life: the matriarch’s funeral and the patriarch’s birthday celebration. As the family’s three generations gather to mourn and to celebrate, they reveal their experiences of love, achievement, disappointment. Urrea takes readers on a journey from La Paz, Mexico to San Diego, California, guiding us along the way to examine how home is created and the bonds that hold a family together. Once a month in September, October, and November, participants will gather on Zoom to discuss the themes in the book and consider connections to the Stanley’s collection. Amanda Lensing, Senior Living Communities program coordinator, and Derek Nnuro, associate writer and collections/exhibitions associate, will facilitate the discussions. Register for the program at https://tinyurl.com/StanleyReads.
smART Talk & Saturdays at the Stanley Graphic Novels & Social Justice The connection between graphic novels and social justice will be explored in two events this fall. In September, Rachel Marie-Crane Williams, associate professor in the School of Art & Art History and Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies, and program head of painting and drawing, will lead a smART Talk about her recently published graphic novel, Run Home If You Don’t Want to Be Killed: The Detroit Uprising of 1943. The book considers the events that led to violence in the summer of 1943. The uprising resulted in the death of thirty-four people, most 22
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LEARNING & ENGAGEMENT of whom were Black and over half of whom were killed by the police. Williams combines meticulous research, including firsthand accounts collected by the NAACP, with empathetic storytelling to produce a moving, informative, and timely graphic novel. Similarly, Ho Che Anderson’s three-volume graphic novel, King, mixes the historical record with imagined conversations and events during Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life in the 1950s and ‘60s. Pages from King with the artist’s and editor’s annotations are part of the Stanley School Programs Collection that has visited K–12 schools across Iowa. In November, Siefken will present Anderson’s work and discuss the social justice themes present in the Stanley School Programs Graphic Novels & Comics Collection at Saturdays at the Stanley on Zoom.
Stanley Creates Coffee Painting Stanley Creates is an interactive program for children and teens to learn artmaking techniques using everyday materials. Taking inspiration from the museum’s collection, participants play with materials to create unique projects at home. Lauren Linahon, a master’s candidate in art education at the College of Education, demonstrates the process and provides feedback to participants. In October, Linahon will lead a coffee painting workshop. Coffee painting is a centuries-old technique that produces a painting similar to watercolor. By modifying the intensity of the brewed coffee, artists can adjust the saturation of the hue. Join us to learn how to transform your energizing morning drink into a beautiful work of art! Register for the program: https://tinyurl. com/StanleyCreates. FA LL 20 2 1
This image gives a sense of the different tonalities that coffee painting can achieve. Unknown Chinese artist Untitled (river and mountain landscape), late 20th century Paint on silk 13 1/2 x 15 3/4 in. (34.29 x 40.01 cm) Estate of Virginia A. Myers, 2017.153 23
Become a Stanley Docent Nearly fifteen years ago Jude Langhurst retired from a career in public relations and advertising and moved to Iowa City to be closer to family. She’d been living in Burlington, Iowa, where she first cultivated her passion for encouraging young people to be creative. Langhurst worked as a volunteer, presenting art to grade school students. While that experience was formative for her, Langhurst quips that it was not the start of a grand plan to become what she is today—the Stanley museum’s most dedicated docent. “I saw a small ad for docents in the [Iowa City] Press Citizen and applied,” Langhurst says. “It really was just luck that I found something I could enjoy with passion.” After the 2008 flood shuttered the museum’s doors, curators began acquiring artworks for classroom presentations, and Langhurst’s role as a docent evolved into familiar territory: she found herself again taking art into schools. “Teachers from across Iowa requested
in-class presentations,” she says. “With organizational and transportation help from the [Stanley] staff I presented on African art, masks, American Indian art, art of the Pacific Northwest, comics, Gee’s Bend quilts, and art from Northern India. Even though the topics were widely varied I could never find a personal favorite, nor could I find one I did not enjoy sharing with children.” When the new Stanley Museum of Art opens next fall, Langhurst and other docents will provide tours and educational experiences to museum visitors of all ages. Associate Curator of Education Joshua Siefken, who coordinates the recently relaunched docent program, looks forward to bringing a new crop of volunteers into the fold. “The docent corps will provide a vital role in the community,” he says. “During training sessions, they will learn about new scholarship and educational theories on some of our oldest and most well-known artworks. Their voice will reach thousands of children and provide insight to Iowans regardless of their knowledge of art.” Langhurst is eager to see her favorite artworks on display in their new, permanent home. She anticipates a rush of emotions. “Usually I find that the more I know and understand about a piece of art, the more I develop an attachment to the piece. For me, it’s like developing a friendship,” she says. “Those pieces I’d presented to students at the old museum before the flood were the works I most treasured, and it will be good to renew our relationship.” stanleymuseum.uiowa.edu/about/ opportunities/
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PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Left: Jude Langhurst at Jackson Elementary School, Maquoketa, Iowa. Far left: Brady Plunger at Aurora Heights Elementary, Newton, Iowa.
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GRADUATE ASSISTANT SPOTLIGHT Jennifer (Otis) Miller
Alice Gisler
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oth a ceramic artist and a doctoral student in the University of Iowa College of Education’s Language, Literacy, and Culture program, Jennifer Miller brings broad experience and interests to her work with the Stanley’s Learning and Engagement department. Her pilot video series for the Stanley YouTube channel, Unexpected Insights, highlights a single work from the collection and invites three people from the community with different perspectives to share personal reflections. These responses provide unique viewpoints on art and life in Iowa and beyond.
Miller found producing a purely digital project during a mostly digital work experience a challenge unlike her physical art Photo by Veronica Burns practice. Happily, she was able to make exciting connections and share the voices of people from the UI Center for the Book, her ceramics community, the food industry, and beyond. Miller hopes her model of community conversations will continue to serve the museum in the future and “make works of art more accessible to wider audiences.” Looking forward, she wants “to facilitate these kinds of conversations with [others]—communicating across differences and inviting people in.” Offering paid, pre-professional opportunities to UI students and encouraging diverse points of view are values embedded in the museum’s strategic plan. Not only do student employees gain skills and experiences that will serve them well in any field they pursue, but they also make valuable contributions to museum planning, programming, and thinking. 26
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orking for the museum is a “complete coincidence” says UI School of Library and Information Science graduate student Alice Gisler. “I was just hunting around for scholarships and this one crossed my desk.” She has been pushing herself for the last couple of years to try new things, branch out, and learn new skills. In her work with the Curatorial and Collections Management teams, Gisler is “doing what needs to be done,” which includes grant research, collections database entry, and editing images of inaugural exhibition objects in Adobe Photoshop. She compiled the properly scaled images into a library so Photo by Alice Gisler curators could easily locate objects by accession number and import them into the 3D modeling software SketchUp. Gisler has become so proficient in SketchUp that she completed a model of a teen/young adult area for a public library as part of her coursework. “I would not have been able to do that without the work I’ve done here at the Stanley. It’s been a wonderful opportunity.” With an anticipated May 2022 graduation, Gisler hopes to find “straight up public librarian work.” Her passion is focusing her work on LBGTQ+ youth and teens. Gisler wants to create a space where they can “get information, express themselves creatively, and feel like they can have ownership of themselves and their lives, and their place in the world.” S TANLEY M U S E U M O F A RT
INTERNS SPOTLIGHT Riley Hanick
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iley Hanick was born and raised in Iowa City, and as is often the case, has close ties with the University of Iowa. More specifically, Hanick is no stranger to the Stanley Museum of Art, where he is working as an Iowa Digital Intern in the Humanities this summer. “On some level,” Hanick points out, “I have a significant debt to pay to the Stanley.”
Hanick’s first book, Three Kinds of Motion, was published in 2015. The book began as a short essay after Hanick went to see the scroll version of On the Road by Jack Kerouac when it was on display at the museum alongside Jackson Pollock’s Mural. “I was letting myself daydream about writing an essay that was an act of accompaniment,” he says. Photo by Lydia Diemer “I think that being able to walk [into the museum] at no charge and simply check in with this painting was how I made the time to start believing in the book.” The book, according to Hanick, also focuses on the development of the interstate highway system in the United States. Hanick just completed his first year of doctoral work in the English department, after receiving his MLIS in Library Science with a Graduate Certificate in Book Arts from the UI Center for the Book in 2020. At the Stanley, he continues to pursue the unique ekphrastic tradition he started years ago: “My goal during this summer is to complete a fairly compact piece of writing that makes use of some digital tools to highlight a selection of works from the permanent collection in anticipation of next fall’s inaugural exhibition.” FA LL 20 2 1
Danielle Hoskins
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anielle Hoskins will be entering her final year of her PhD program in the UI’s History department this fall. Her dissertation, tentatively titled “Look Like a Girl, Think Like a Man, Act Like a Lady, and Work Like a Dog”: American Women in Politics, 1945–1965 considers how women in the years following WWII became involved in their communities, in women’s clubs, and in political work, and how some of them ran as homemakers for state legislatures. In addition to her scholarly work, Hoskins has taught several undergraduate courses at the UI, an experience that has been revealing for her. “I feel most at home in front of a classroom,” Hoskins says. Photo by Elizabeth Wallace “I have become convinced that the amount I sweat while teaching is not related to nerves—sometimes, in fact, it is related to the lunges I am doing across the classroom, to show the relative freedom bloomers provided women in the 1850s.” This same energy and passion for teaching is at the center of Hoskins’s time with the Stanley this summer. As an Iowa Digital Intern in the Humanities, she is looking to make an impact in the classroom through the project she’s working on: “a resource that is a combination of a website tutorial for undergraduate students on how to use the Stanley’s digital collections, and a digital object-based learning instructive element that ties into the Japanese history course I am teaching this fall.”
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Buffie and Richard Tucker (75JD) believe that art is for everyone. Not only did they teach their own daughters, Jessica Tucker Glick (07JD) and Ashley Tucker, about the power of art, but the couple also is inspiring future generations of Iowa students and faculty. Their gift to the My Museum fundraising campaign will result in the naming of a visual classroom in the new museum. “The exposure my parents gave us to so many forms of art instilled in me the ability to appreciate work from all genres,” says Jessica, who lives in Iowa City and practices law alongside her father at Phelan Tucker Law LLP. She joined the museum’s volunteer Members Council as a way of staying connected to the place that has meant so much to her parents. It’s a place that changed Buffie’s life when the Oklahoman set foot in Iowa City in summer 1979. Her future mother-in-law took her to the museum, and it was love at first sight. “I’ve always had a great interest in art, and I was so struck by the breadth and quality of its collections,” says Buffie. She has a degree in art education and began volunteering for the museum in 1980, eventually becoming an employee. She retired as the Members Council coordinator in 2012 and continues to serve as a Stanley Museum volunteer today. Richard—who’s from Iowa City and studied in Florence, Italy, during his time as an undergraduate at Stanford University— FA LL 20 2 1
MY MUSEUM shares Buffie’s passion for the arts. Throughout the years, they’ve attended many theater performances and visited numerous galleries and museums, and together, they have built a deeply personal art collection. It features pieces by artists whom they know or who have a connection to the university or the state. The couple and their daughters eagerly anticipate the day when they can, once again, view such works in the Stanley Museum of Art’s own collections. “We most want to see the return of Jackson Pollock’s Mural to Iowa City—and to view it hanging in its new home, along with many of our other favorites,” says Richard. Once that happens, students and faculty from across campus also will have the chance to visit the third-floor Tucker Visual Classroom, where they can request individual pieces from the museum’s collection for closer study and understanding. “We have so many memories of quiet art viewings, special exhibitions, and many other activities and events with our family and friends,” says Buffie. “Our hope is that the new museum will give present and future generations even more enjoyment and educational opportunities.”
“We have so many memories of quiet art viewings, special exhibitions, and many other activities and events with our family and friends. Our hope is that the new museum will give present and future generations even more enjoyment and educational opportunities.” BUFFIE TUCKER 29
See Yourself as a Stanley Member The University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art has offered free admission since opening its doors in 1969. This summer, we’re reaffirming our commitment to community accessibility by also making it free to join our membership program. We want everyone to see themselves at the Stanley!
Join today by visiting stanleymuseum.uiowa.edu!
We recognize the barriers that have long existed in traditional museum membership models, and we believe dues shouldn’t stand in the way of transformational art experiences. By making membership free for all, we’re reflecting our mission of remaining an inclusive and welcoming resource for discovery, inquiry, collaboration, and creativity.
Your generous private support still is crucial. It allows us to offer world-class exhibitions and programs; hire, train, and pay the next generation of museum leaders; and maintain our beautiful new building.
When you become a Stanley Museum of Art member, you join a community with a shared passion for art and engagement. As a member, you’ll enjoy: • • •
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A subscription to our Stanley Museum e-newsletter Advance notice of museum programs, exhibitions, and events Lifetime membership
If you’re already a member, you will continue to be one and don’t need to sign up again. The UI Stanley Museum of Art is here for everyone. So welcome—or welcome back!
You can make a gift online when you sign up as a member, or you can support the Stanley Museum of Art by donating through the mailings you receive from us. This fall we’re launching a new Friends Recognition Program that will allow us to celebrate annual supporters’ gifts in Stanley programs, exhibitions, educational programs, and more! Questions? Contact Susan Horan at 319-467-3407 or susan.horan@foriowa.org.
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FROM THE UI CENTER FOR ADVANCEMENT
The University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art is just a year away from reopening! While our staff spends the next 12 months packing and installing the collection—and planning wonderful and engaging programs—I will be out meeting with supporters like you. Philanthropy plays a key role at the Stanley Museum of Art, and I hope to be a resource for you as you make your own philanthropic decisions. When I talk with our generous patrons, we discuss how art has shaped their lives—and how they can make an impact through financial gifts. In previous issues, I’ve written about how some of these art lovers have partnered with the museum. Many have made gifts to the My Museum building campaign or have created endowed funds to support specific initiatives in perpetuity. Others have told us about their plans to provide for the museum through estate gifts. All of these charitable contributions make a difference! We rely on your support each year. Sharing your annual and long-term philanthropic plans helps you—and us—prepare for the future. It also ensures that we use your gifts in the way you intended. What could a partnership with the Stanley Museum of Art look like for you? Let’s get together and find out!
We rely on your support each year. Sharing your annual and long-term philanthropic plans helps you—and us— prepare for the future.
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Susan Horan, Director of Development The University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art The University of Iowa Center for Advancement susan.horan@foriowa.org 319-467-3407 or 800-648-6973
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University of Iowa
Stanley Museum of Art 150 NORTH RIVERSIDE DRIVE / OMA 100 IOWA CITY, IA 52242 319-335-1727 stanleymuseum.uiowa.edu
Spark curiosity Inspire discovery Connect with your community
Become a Stanley docent We want you to be in the first graduating class of docents in our new home stanleymuseum.uiowa.edu/about/opportunities/ JOIN TODAY!
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