March Madness

(March 22, 2019) – Figge Art Museum,  Davenport, Iowa

Gratefully, I scored tickets to first weekend sessions of hoops to the Big Dance in Des Moines. The first day’s elven-hour four game marathon was on Thursday. Qualifying for the Sweet Sixteen on Saturday were Michigan behemoths Michigan and Michigan State.

Des Moines’ Wells Fargo Events center was a comfortable venue with good sight lines, spacious, and with exceedingly efficient operations. Kudos to the Polk County Sheriff’s Department and the Des Moines Police for spectacular traffic control.

On the intervening Friday tournament day off, I trekked the one hundred seventy-five miles across Interstate 80 from Des Moines to Davenport, Iowa intent on checking out American artist and native Iowan, Grant Wood. My destination was Davenport’s Figge Art Museum the world’s largest repository of Wood’s art and his papers. They were a gift of Wood’s sister, Nan, who was the female subject in Wood’s Goliath masterpiece. and an icon of American art, “American Gothic.” Notably, “American Gothic” resides at the Art Institute in Chicago.

Recently, I have been studying American Regionalism and Wood’s works and have been looking forward to an opportunity to get to Davenport. Planning my visit, I read about Wood specifically and the current exhibits at the Figge museum. Even though I had viewed the museum’s website multiple times, I never focused on the museum’s building or its history.

Likewise, I’ve never paid attention to the Quad Cities (Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa and Rock Island and Moline, Illinois) either. When traveling on I-80, I always marveled at the big river but never made a pit stop to check out the Cities south of the super highway. I am enamored by Mississippi River towns and without research was expecting a small-town museum that lucked into Wood’s significant art trove. I envisioned likely a restored mansion along the river. Something like the Children’s Museum on Summit Avenue in Fort Worth when I was young.

My Garmin delivered me to the museum, and I was astonished! Indeed March Madness.

The Figge Art Museum is imposing. It is fronted by a plaza with parking. while sitting on the backside is the mammoth Mississippi riverscape. Figge is large and modern. The museum designed by British architect, David Chipperfield, opened in 2005. This gorgeous structure is a key element of Davenport’s River Renaissance, revitalization. 

As a result of the new building, the former Davenport Art Museum was renamed the Figge Art Museum. Its moniker “The Figge.” The renaming was to honor Mr. and Mrs. V.O. Figge. The new building’s fundamental contribution for construction was from the V.O. and Elizabeth Kahl Figge Foundation. Mr. Figge had been a prominent Davenport banker.

My biggest surprise wasn’t the building but were the treasures inside.

I was ready for current exhibits described on the museum’s website, Animals in the Museum, Louis Comfort Tiffany: Treasures from the Driehaus Collection, but not the permanent collection. Among the galleries of the permanent collection were Haitian Art, Visions of the American West, The American Scene Regional Realism, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

The shocker are the gems exhibited in the Stanley Collection Gallery, “Legacies of Iowa.” These included works by Chagall, Picasso, Matisse, Marsden Hartley, Thomas Hart Benton among other masters.

Totally in my wheelhouse, was learning about the history of the Stanley Collection of such great Art. In the early 1960s the University of Iowa Museum of Art (UIMA) was established at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. The foundation of their collection were the many significant pieces of great art contributed by benevolent Hawkeyes and others.

In 2008 flooding overran the banks of the Iowa River that streams through The University of Iowa campus. In harm’s way was the UIMA. Almost the entire collection was successfully evacuated to Chicago for storage before the museum was compromised. Until the Stanley can be suitably rebuilt, under special agreement part of UIMA’s collection has been on permanent loan to the Figge; A silver lining for my visit.

There is much more I could say about the Figge but following are a few highlights.

The display of Grant Wood works and papers I traveled to see was limited.  Only four of Wood’s works were on display. The most dramatic was “Return from Bohemia”. The crayon, gouache, and pencil drawing include his lesser known self-portrait. “Return from Bohemia”, was intended to be the book cover for his never completed auto biography

The Realistic Regionalism gallery included works by American Regional Masters including Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry. Including Wood this triumvirate depicted the Midwest as prosperous, with rolling hills, rivers, and large fields with abundant crops. Several of the pieces had loose brush strokes associated with Impressionism, the foundation of early 20^th century American Realism. Accompanying the featured Midwesterners in this galley were Illinois artist John Bloom, and American folk artist Grandma Moses.

The Figge’s headliner was the Louis Comfort Tiffany exhibit. Foremost I was impressed with the Davenport museum’s curatorial effort and the scope of this exhibit. The glass windows, lamps, and vases are exquisite. Tiffany is the gold standard in design and manufacture. The museum staff did a wonderful job in their display and conveying Tiffany’s history and methods. Fascinating!

Most Unique Painting, I Liked – A Fishing Harbor, 1683, by Matthais Withoos, Netherlands, 1627-1703. The first minute I saw this unique painting I was bewitched. A still life within a landscape.

The food - Worth mentioning was a quick stop at Whitey’s, the Quad Cities’ ice cream emporium, for a memorable turtle sundae – great salted pecans. On the return trip to Des Moines, there was supper in Iowa City near the Hawkeye campus. Near perfect rueben sandwich and a vodka tonic at St. Burch Tavern. $$

Overall a great March day in eastern Iowa on the River.