Omaha is Des Moines’ great rival. The two cities have long battled for low fare airlines, parimutuel gamblers and amateur hockey titles. They share much in common. Both towns have been kissed by extraordinary corporate success. That has translated into healthy cultural scenes. An examination of towns’ artistic characters distinguishes
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Posted December 18, 2013in Art News
This year has treated Des Moines’ art fans to grand-scale exhibitions. At the Des Moines Art Center, “Transparencies” gathered 10 artists from five countries whose works explored glass as both a subject matter and medium; “Phyllida Barlow: Scree” delivered 27 monumental tons of magic stuff; and “Gravity and Grace: Monumental
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Posted November 20, 2013in Art News
El Anatsui, a Ghanaian born, Ewe-speaking man of the world, showed up for his media interview in Des Moines wearing a black suit, white shirt and athletic shoes as green as a Nigerian soccer jersey with bright red trim and large treads. “So now I won’t fall down,” he explained.
Read More →September was packed with the pop art of capitalism, an Anderson Gallery exhibition of vinyl record album covers and a Faulconer show featuring the art of supermarket aisles. October seems to be reverting to more elemental subjects. The Ankeny Art Center’s “Wonders of the Tallgrass Prairie,” featuring works of Gary
Read More →Walking into the Anderson Gallery at Drake University is not like walking into an art gallery at all. It’s more like walking into a record store from 40 years ago. Posters of The Beatles and Pink Floyd record albums are on the wall, and music is playing just loud enough
Read More →Picasso remarked that artists are children who never grow up. Perhaps that explains why the art world’s calendars begin in September. For whatever reason, this month brings a bounty of brilliant new shows to Des Moines, several of which carry very similar themes. At Moberg Gallery, Larassa Kabel displays new
Read More →Moberg Gallery’s current group show includes four artists of considerable demographic range, from octogenarian Sandra Perlow to 20-somethings Jordan Weber and Stephanie Brunia, with Lynn Basa in the middle. Perlow, a Chicago artist making her Des Moines debut, is a Philip Guston disciple who turns abstraction into a nearly cartoonish
Read More →Des Moines Art Center’s (DMAC) new exhibition “Phyllida Barlow: Scree” represents one of the happier stories about life after “retirement.” From the late 1960s until 2009, she was a professor at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London. Barlow produced many drawings and sculptures during those years, but she
Read More →This year marks Steven Vail’s 20th anniversary in the gallery business. His exhibitions here, of internationally renowned artists, have usually received more media coverage from New York, Germany and even Hong Kong than they have in Des Moines. How did he manage to survive? “Luther Utterback (Des Moines artist) took
Read More →Art-driven image makeovers are being created around the metro this merry month of May. Consider Clive, surely the largest city in Iowa without a high school. Most towns identify predominantly with their schools, particularly with their high schools. Residents wear their colors, call themselves after their mascots, cheer their teams
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