(March 22, 2019) – Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa
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 20th 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.
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