Description

The University of Iowa Museum of Art (UIMA) opened in 1969 to house collections begun through private gifts and acquisitions from mid-century contemporary art exhibitions organized by UI’s School of Art and Art History. Peggy Guggenheim’s 1951 gift of Jackson Pollock’s “Mural” was foundational to the young museum’s national reputation. After an expansion in the 1970s, UIMA’s trajectory was dramatically interrupted when the catastrophic floods of 2008 required the emergency evacuation of the entire collection and decommissioning of the museum building. The collections have since remained in storage at the Figge Art Museum except for a selection of works that have been on view in a campus teaching venue originally funded by FEMA.  
The University of Iowa (UI) is now preparing to open the UI Stanley Museum of Art (UISMA) in a safely located and expansive new facility. UISMA seeks support for the debut of its galleries in September 2022 with a series of installations entitled “Homecoming,” which will reintroduce the collections to the public and reinvigorate UI’s early commitment—known as the “Iowa Idea” — to placing artistic practice at the center of cross-disciplinary teaching, experiential learning, and civic dialogue. To align with its new mission, UISMA aims to expand its reach (beyond UI and local schools) to welcome broader and more diverse local, regional, and national audiences with the aim of catalyzing inclusive conversations about art, history, and culture. “Homecoming” will center the work of BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women artists, applying multiple points of entry, and employing empathy to catalyze dialogues.   
Two inaugural collections-based exhibitions will recontextualize iconic American art objects with works by historically under-represented artists, including recent acquisitions and strategic loans that point to future acquisitions. “Generations” will celebrate artists as research practitioners who test the limits of expressive possibility, centering themes that speak both to artistic invention and UI’s pedagogical mission.  In “History is Always Now,” modern and contemporary African American art will be set in dialogue with UISMA’s historical arts of Africa. Subsequent phases will include an exhibition of UIIUSMA’s Native American ledger drawings curated by a Native scholar, and another in which former fellows of the Center for Afrofuturist Studies respond to the American art collections.  
An accompanying publication will be the museum’s first to feature original ekphrastic writing by diverse alumni of UI’s distinguished writing programs. Entitled “In a Time of Witness,” it will present creative writing by authors–including Marilynne Robinson, Carmen Machado, Derek Nnuro, and Sandra Cisneros–as a form of research on the collection, expanding art historical narratives through diverse perspectives. Writing by these authors will also be featured in gallery texts.