Posted February 28, 2018in Art News
A homecoming of sorts for Wagener Ellen Wagener is simply one of the best Iowa landscape painters ever. She often follows the Monet strategy of revisiting the same place at many different times to observe the subtle changes in a steady environment. She took a long sabbatical from Iowa to
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Posted January 31, 2018in Art News
The kind of show that would make my grandfather roll his eyes The Des Moines Art Center has hosted many exhibitions that could easily have been subtitled “Wanderlust.” Their retrospective on Henri Cartier-Bresson particularly comes to mind. That show was about the great photographer’s worldwide search for truth and meaning.
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Posted January 03, 2018in Art News
The year in review The year 2017 was a most eclectic one for the local art scene. Just consider the media that starred here this year. We had exhibitions made with gold, ballistics, asphalt, lion piss, brass knuckles, bones, hair, shoes, purses, fire, cellophane and Kapoor black, a paint that
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Posted December 06, 2017in Art News
Amy Worthen’s works are both fantastical and architectural Amy Worthen is endowed by spirits from another age. As both an artist and art historian, she hangs around with ancient ideas and animal souls. At Iowa State University’s Brunnier Museum, a major retrospective of her last five decades of work takes
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Posted November 01, 2017in Art News
Art is busting out all over in Des Moines. As reported last month, the Des Moines Art Center’s new “Drawing in Space” show drew its largest opening crowds since Duane Hanson showed here in 1977. More recently, Moberg Gallery experienced its biggest turnout for an opening with Sarah Grant and
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Posted October 04, 2017in Art News
Three distinctive buildings designed by three brilliant architects The Des Moines Art Center boasts three distinctive buildings designed by three brilliant architects at a pivotal point in their careers. The original building was built in 1948 by Eliel Saarinen after he won a major competition to design the Smithsonian Museum
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Posted September 06, 2017in Art News
The Des Moines Art Center’s latest show in its print gallery is a reflection upon a short 1926 poem by Langston Hughes. “I, too, sing America” has 58 words. It also serves as the only published commentary on the exhibition, a refreshing concision in an era when a small academic
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Posted August 02, 2017in Art News
“Shouldn’t Iowa be the subject of a show at the Iowa State Fair?” asked my granddaughter while looking at travel photographs from Spain, Mexico, Santa Fe and Eastern Europe. It’s a most debatable question. Bill Woolston, a University of Idaho professor emeritus, presented an exhibition at the Fair in 2014
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Posted July 05, 2017in Art News
Jordan Weber is a chronicler of environmental degradation and its effects on communities, particularly African-American communities. He has made quite a name, too, having been invited to big shows on both coasts and being paired with some of the biggest names in African-American art. Most recently he did an exhibition
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Posted June 01, 2017in Art News
“Ruptures” is the title of the Des Moines Art Center’s latest show, through Sept. 3. It’s also a keyword in creative theory from Japanese aesthetics, to Hegel’s “Dialectic” and Arthur Koestler’s “Act of Creation.” Creativity depends upon conflict — ideological, cosmic or artistic. An exhibition that directly addresses this point
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