Iowa’s big moment in the art world
8/5/2026
“Wintering,” a series of three by Warren Rosen
This summer, 41 years after her murder, Ana Mendieta reached her career zenith headlining at London’s Tate Modern. That’s a top-five most-visited art museum in the world and number one for modern art. A retrospective of Mendieta’s career opened in mid-July with more than 120 works, tracing her breakout years in Iowa City through 1984. It’s the largest-ever U.K. exhibition of her work, with many pieces shown in Britain for the first time.
It is also being hailed as a striking curatorial moment: three powerhouse female artists are headlining at the Tate Modern, in London, at once, with Mendieta joining Tracey Emin (through Aug. 30) and Frida Kahlo (through Jan. 3, 2027) creating a capstone for outgoing director Maria Balshaw.
“Undertow” by Warren Rosen
Mendieta landed in Sioux City as a child, part of the Operation Peter Pan airlift of Cuban children after the Cuban Revolution. She is best known for her “Silueta Series” exploring the presence and absence of the human body, using a number of natural materials including fire, water and flowers. These ephemeral works were recorded as photographs and films.
Active in the 1970s and early 1980s, the Cuban-born Iowa immigrant posed profound questions around displacement and identity, which remain highly relevant today. “Ana Mendieta” plays through Jan. 17.
Warren Rosen Launches Digital Art Gallery
Warren Rosen, an Oaxaca expatriate from Des Moines, opened his long-awaited digital art gallery Warren Rosen Art Gallery. www.warrenrosenart.com/artwork-3
Rosen is author of the autobiographical “Monk on the Run” and worked with Mendieta in her early career. Rosen even predated Mendieta in joining Hans Breder’s legendary Intermedia Program at the University of Iowa. Rosen’s work is often reminiscent of Breder and Mendieta’s, particularly his “Undertow.”
This mural by a young b. Robert Moore may be gone by press time.
In Des Moines, preservation hopes are looking doomed for an early mural by b. Robert Moore. It was painted at 210 Euclid before the artist became famous. It’s likely to be destroyed by the time you read this.
First A.I. art museum debuts
Dataland, the world’s first A.I. art museum, opened in June. Founded by artist Refik Anadol, whose visualizations of data made him a digital art superstar, the museum is housed inside the Grand L.A., a Frank Gehry-designed complex of high-end apartments, entertainment facilities and a luxury hotel in Downtown Los Angeles.
The museum’s debut show, “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” is “a redefinition of what art can be in the age of machine intelligence” in Anadol’s words. The five-gallery wide exhibition simulates alternate, possible rainforests by processing ecological data (birdsongs, plant life, weather) which are turned into “digital sculptures.”
One A.I. portrait by Anadol is based on soccer star Lionel Messi’s favorite goal and just sold for $1.8 million at Christie’s, an art and luxury auction house.
What the world needs now — a road trip
Suzanne Jackson’s latest exhibition at Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center, through Aug. 23, poses a simple question: What is love? Across painting, poetry and dance, Jackson’s works touch upon ideas spanning memory, nature, beauty and notions of Blackness. Yet, at its core, her practice is informed by love. For Jackson, “love is the act of making art.”
Carcinogenic water art
A new public art piece at Wilson’s Orchard doubles as a quilt and a water filter that can clean up nitrates. “It’s in the Water” highlights Iowa’s water quality crisis while combining art and science to hint at solutions. The floating sculpture, created by Drake University professors Emily Newman and Edward Kelley, captures nitrates from a pond at Wilson’s Orchard, which agreed to showcase the piece. The quilt is made of recycled plastic, with buoys at each corner made from 5-gallon buckets in which spirulina algae absorb excess nitrates from the water and pull carbon from the atmosphere. Sensors and filters are also attached to the piece, and the buoys are periodically removed to weigh the saturated algae and estimate how much nitrate they capture. The installation is free and viewable outdoors at Wilson’s Orchard & Farm in Cumming through September. ♦
Jim Duncan is a food and art writer who has been covering the central Iowa scene for more than five decades.
