Museum

The flooding in Iowa has engulfed parts of Iowa City, including the Museum of Art at the University of Iowa. Here's a photo of the Museum from Flickr:


Thankfully, the Museum had a contingency plan in place and removed the artwork before the rising water could do damage.

It is a wonderful museum, by the way; a small but very impressive collection well worth visiting if you are in the area after the waters have receded. Its most famous piece is of course Pollock's "Mural," painted for Peggy Guggenheim's NYC townhouse in 1943 and apparently the largest of his pre-drip paintings.

I'm not sure how it ended up in Iowa City, but here's a photo from a few weeks ago. That's Colleen on one of the two Eames 670 lounges the Museum has oh-so-wisely placed before Mural:

My 2 cents: More museums should do this. Not just stiff benches, but lounge chairs.

And what university museum worth its salt would be without a Diebenkorn "Ocean Park"?


I don't mean to be cynical. I love all Diebenkorn, but his ubiquity gets a bit tiresome sometimes. Nonetheless, this was a particularly fine early OP, from 1968.

***

The Museum has three works by Philip Guston on display, which illustrates his evolution from the 1940s to the 1970s. Guston was a professor at UI for a period, I believe.

Anyway, here are images of the three Gustons from the Museum's website. The first is from his early "realist" phase, "The Young Mother" from 1944:

The second is (sort of) from his "classic" Ab-Ex phase, "Edge" from 1960:


The third is from his "r. Crumb" phase, "Ramp" from 1979:


Check out the Museum's other offerings -- including a terrific Beckmann triptych and, of course, a nice Grant Wood -- here.

Once again, condolences to all in the Midwest suffering from the terrible floods.