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Posted July 31, 2019in Art News

Digital when digital wasn’t cool

Gardening and art are intermingled in the mindset of Bill Luchsinger and Karen Strohbeen. Bill Luchsinger and Karen Strohbeen are Iowa’s original digital couple. They were transferring images to computer prints back when they had to drive to Omaha to use computers and printers big enough to work to their

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Posted July 03, 2019in Art News

Love in the time of Der Fuhrer

The Grundigs defied the Nazis, buying a press and distributing pro-Jewish and Communist points of view. Lea Grundig is little known in the U.S. That’s a shame. She and her radical Communist husband Hans lived in Dresden during Germany’s most modern Dark Age, the two disastrous World Wars and the

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Posted June 05, 2019in Art News

Cosmopolitan Des Moines

The local art scene is continually improving. After writing about art in Des Moines for more than 30 years, I marvel most at how much things have become more cosmopolitan. Nothing illustrates this more than Moberg Gallery. When they opened 15 years ago, they were an all-metro gallery. Every artist

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Posted May 01, 2019in Art News

Dutch Masters, Suffragettes and Anniversaries

Molly Wood replicates still-life paintings of the masters by raising her plants indoors and lighting her photos exclusively with natural light. Olson-Larsen Galleries is celebrating its 40th anniversary with an exhibition that includes 70 pieces by 55 artists from its four decades in town. Memorial photo montages are also included

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Posted April 03, 2019in Art News

The intermingled destinies of animals

“The Elephant in the Room: Animal as Model” is the latest exhibition at the Des Moines Art Center. From Aesop to Brer Rabbit, from the bulls of Chauvet Cave to “The Lion King,” from Egyptian myth to “Animal Farm,” animals have been portraying humans as parables. For perhaps 40,000 years,

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Posted March 06, 2019in Art News

Look closer, before it’s too late

Des Moines lost its most celebrated artist. “All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.” Edgar Allen Poe Des Moines lost its most celebrated artist when Alex Brown died at his home on the penultimate day of January after an aneurism at age 52. Brown attended

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Posted February 06, 2019in Art News

Art of winter

Moberg Gallery’s 15th anniversary group show is up through Feb. 23 with an eclectic display of the gallery’s versatility and growth. When the gallery opened 15 years ago, it represented four artists, including owner TJ Moberg and his father Tom and two of their friends. Today they represent 60 and

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Posted January 02, 2019in Art News

Big names in world art

A star-studded year The local art scene experienced a star-studded year in 2018. Two of the really big names in world art visited the Des Moines Art Center for exhibitions of specific areas within their bodies of work. First, Sterling Ruby came for the opening of “Sterling Ruby: Ceramics” a

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Posted December 05, 2018in Art News

Moberg – 15 years against the odds

Today they represent 60 artists and work with 100 others from all over the world. The first time I visited Moberg Gallery, then known as Moberg Studio, I had my West Highland Terrier with me, I peeked in the door and said I would put my dog in the car

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Posted October 31, 2018in Art News

A German genius in Des Moines

Neo Rauch is one of Europe’s most interesting and wealthy painters. Orphaned as an infant, he grew up in the old East Germany, near Leipzig. He has lived life from both sides of the wall and its rubble. He was in Des Moines recently for “Neo Rauch: Aus Dem Boden,”

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