Des Moines in July 2021

The Des Moines Opera, our reason for going to Iowa, is located south of Des Moines in Indianola. Looking at the map, we discovered that Winterset, Iowa is west of Indianola. We had just seen the play Leaving Iowa at Theatre Lawrence; it is set in Winterset, and Winterset is the county seat of Madison County, known for its Bridges, so we wandered over there. We skipped the John Wayne museum, but did visit three of the six famous bridges. Here's the Holliwell Covered Bridge, built in 1880 to replace an earlier bridge. It is the longest covered bridge, and the longest timber bridge in Iowa. 

H. P. Jones and G. K. Foster, Holliwell Covered Bridge, 1880

All the bridges are accompanied by very helpful historic bronze labels. 

Downtown we noticed the Iowa Quilt Museum and stopped there, where the exhibition was 40x40@40: Celebrating 40 Years of the Manhattan Quilters Guild, You know you've been in Kansas a long time when you ask if the quilts are from Kansas and are told, "No, they're from New York." Each 40 by 40 inches, they were stunning works of art. Here are three:

Daphne Taylor, Quilt Drawing #21, 2017

Diana Goulston Robinson, Eye Catcher, 2019

Beth Carney, Movement 3, 2019

We continued to the Des Moines Art Center, known for its three iconic architects: Eliel Saarinen (1948 building), I.M.Pei (1968 expansion), and Richard Meier (1985 expansion), and for its sometimes daring and creative contemporary collecting. The exhibition there was Central America, work by Justin Favela, who refers both to his Central American heritage and to Iowa's Central American location. In the paper material used for pinatas he created an huge installation depicting works in the Art Center collection and images from Central America. The central object is a gigantic paper pizza. In the background of the photograph below you can see Favela's copy with a mirror image, of the Grant Wood painting in the Center's collection. The installation, obviously labor-intensive, was also exceptionally joyful, showing harvests, landscapes, palm trees, and scenes from life in the two Central Americas.

Grant Wood, The Birthplace of Herbert Hoover, 1931

The Des Moines collection challenges me to think about a wide range of mostly recent art, some familiar, some not. A few objects that caught my eye, beyond my favorite Anselm Kiefer, Fred Wilson, and Graciela Iturbide were this gorgeous Henry Ossawa Tanner of Christ Learning to Read, ca. 1911,

Nick Cave, Rescue, 2013, celebrating a ceramic dog surrounded by glass, metal and porcelain birds, flowers and beads.

In an overwhelming installation by Jamaican artist Ebony G. Patterson, AMONG THE BLADES BETWEEN THE FLOWERS...WHILE THE HORSE WATCHES...FOR THOSE WHO BEAR/BARE WITNESS, 2018, exuberant materials commemorate Jamaicans lost to slavery and racism.

As always, the opera production of Queen of Spades was well done. Joyce Castle was a triumph, looking appropriately frail and and singing absolutely beautifully. 

 In the summer of 2021 we did some significant travel, beginning with the late April trip to Fargo, but continuing with a long weekend in Washington, DC that included the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, a performance of Pauline Viardot's chamber opera, Cendrillon at Wolf Trap and a quick visit to the National Gallery; then to Des Moines for the opera Queen of Spades with Joyce Castle in the title role, the Iowa Quilt Museum, a few Bridges of Madison County, and the Des Moines Art Center; New York, where there was no theater, but I was determined to see the Medici portrait exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum; Santa Fe for Indian Market, a trip that included a wonderful exhibition at the Albuquerque Museum of Art of the Transcendental Painting Group; and Skaneateles, New York for a reunion with my good friends from high school that included the Corning Glass Museum, which we have long wanted to visit. All these trips were between June and September. After a brief stay at home for apple season and Tom's birthday, we left again at the end of October for Padua and Venice, for our first visit to the Venice Architecture Biennale. Finally, on December 14 we spent a week in London, undaunted by the rapid rise of Omicron in England and the closure of theaters one after the other. Our vaccinations and boosters served us well and we completed all our journeys unaffected. Now, in summer 2022, with more trips behind me and having thought hard and photographed a lot, I'm determined to share, briefly, some of my reflections on these visits. 

The Walters is an amazing museum with a combination of contemporary exhibitions, rich collections, and an obvious commitment to finding multiple ways to address diversity in a collection that was formed by Eurocentric supporters of the Confederacy. The museum's history on its website is revelatory and eye-opening.

This was the first time I remember seeing the image below, the Anti-Slavery Cameo made by William Hackwood for Josiah Wedgwood. It is modelled on the medallion of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade; it became a very popular object on both sides of the Atlantic and was the most recognized image of the anti-slavery movement. The label indicates that the modern viewer might find it problematic in that the man is kneeling, praying, pleading, maintaining racial hierarchy even as the text reads "Am I not a man and a brother?"  I've seen it several times since then and find it powerful and affecting nonetheless.

The cameo is displayed among a group of jewels given by the Walters family. It was purchased by the museum in 1989. 

On our visit the museum showed an exhibition of videos, installations and sculpture by six young artists of color from Baltimore, and another exhibition of important paintings and sculpture by African-American artists relatively recently added to the museum's collection. Here's River Scene, 1868 by Robert Seldon Duncanson (1821-71).

The museum also had a small show of ancient American works and prints to celebrate Mexican and Central American Independence (1821-2021). 

The Walters is unusual in that it displays significant parts of its collection in imitation of the cabinets of curiosities that were popular in Europe in the 16th century and later. Displaying natural objects and works of art together, this panoply of objects is fascinating and fun, and perhaps disturbing. Below is a painting depicting one of those rooms in the 16th century, followed by images of the cabinets at the Walters, including bones, shells, insects, coral objects, silver and gold vessels, gems, paintings, a globe, and ancient American sculpture and gold objects. 

The Walters is known for its collection of Southeast Asian art and even with a very short time to visit, it is very impressive. Here's just one example, a Thai seated Buddha:

One last image from our Washington trip is from the National Gallery. I'm a fan of the Fourth Plinth on Trafalgar Square in London, where a single work of contemporary sculpture is displayed for a period of time. Not long ago the sculpture was the huge blue Hahn/Cock, 2013 by Katarina Fritsch, an artist I first noticed at a Venice Biennale where she displayed a circle of huge black rats (Rat King, 1993). Hahn is now owned by the National Gallery and on display on the museum's roof garden. There's another version at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Me standing next to it gives a sense of the size.