These are the planned upcoming exhibitions and dates and may include working titles. All exhibitions and dates are subject to change.
Click a museum name to jump to the upcoming exhibitions for that museum
Brunnier Art Museum
Christian Petersen Art Museum
Farm House Museum
Anderson Sculpture Garden
Brunnier Art Museum
Epergnes from the Duncan Collection
August 21 – December 15, 2023
Ann Brunnier Decorative Arts Gallery
An exhibition of 36 glass epergnes from the collection of Karen and Robert Duncan. Originally collected by Karen’s mother who lived in Clarinda, Iowa, these elegant epergnes graced dining tables and special events. Inspired by centuries-old traditions of dining still life arrangements, epergnes elegantly exhibited fruits, fancy desserts, and delectables to be served at the conclusion of a formal dining experience.
April Surgent
August 21 – December 15, 2023
The Brunnier Art Museum will host an exhibition and unveil a new commission for the permanent collection by April Surgent, a glass artist based in the Pacific Northwest. Surgent employs the use of cameo engraving, an ancient technique in both gem cutting and glassmaking that demands exceptional skill, ability, and patience. As a coldworking technique for the decoration of glass, it is practiced by few contemporary American glass artists. Surgent spent years studying with Czech glass artist Jiří Harcuba, the premier 20th-century cameo glass engraver. Over time, she has developed the ability to delicately render landscapes through the use of subtle gradation of depth and tone found through cameo engraving. She is unmatched in her ability to depict powerful representations of landscapes and environmental concerns through glass.
Surgent is both an artist and an impassioned environmentalist. Through important research fellowships everywhere from Antarctica to Hawaii, Surgent has spent years attempting to understand the environmental impacts of climate change and humanity on ecologically significant regions. She then uses her research from these locations to create single or multipaneled cameo engravings representing the impacts and the precious beauty of those environments being lost before our eyes. Surgent uses her art to voice the need for global change to save what we can before it is lost.
Pulped Under Pressure
August 21 – December 15, 2023
With traditional hand papermaking at its core, Pulped Under Pressure underscores important contemporary issues steeped in history and craft. Enticed through touch, these works encourage a contemplative slowing down even as they urge acknowledgment of some of the most pressing issues facing civilization today. Each of the artists (Jillian Bruschera, Julia Goodman, Reni Gower, Trisha Oralie Martin, Melissa Potter, Marilyn Propp, Maggie Puckett) starts simply with a foundation of pulp made from natural fibers. In very unique ways, these artists consider paper beyond its most common function as a passive surface record or craft. Instead, the material is transformed and imbedded with content that turns communication into a public practice.
Elizabeth Catlett
January 16 – May 10, 2024
Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012), a sculptor and printmaker, is widely considered one of the most important African American artists of the 20th century. Her work blended art and social consciousness and confronted the most disturbing injustices against African Americans. She is best known for her work during the 1960s and 70s when she created politically charged, black expressionistic sculptures and prints. Catlett was born in Washington, D.C. in 1919. She attended Howard University where she studied design, printmaking, and drawing. In 1940 Catlett became the first student to receive a Master's degree in sculpture at the University of Iowa. In 1946 Catlett received a fellowship that allowed her to travel to Mexico City where she studied painting, sculpture, and lithography. There, she worked with the People's Graphic Arts Workshop, a group of printmakers dedicated to using their art to promote social change. After settling in Mexico and later becoming a Mexican citizen, she taught sculpture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City until retiring in 1975.
Small Pleasures: Tiny Art from the Permanent Collection
August 27 – December 20, 2024
Barrágan: A Spiritual Master
August 27 – December 20, 2024
Lori A. Jacobson Gallery
Luis Barrágan (1902-1988) was a renowned Mexican architect and engineer known for elegant residences and aesthetic gardens with powerful water features. Barrágan’s visual vocabulary used natural elements of water, timber, and stucco paired with vibrant color and texture. He received the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1980.
This exhibition includes twenty-six photographs by Robert Duncan, which explore and are a response to the stunning beauty, architectural elegance, and color of Barrágan’s architectural masterpieces Cuadra San Crist́obal and Casa Gilardi. Curated by Anne Pagel with Merrill Peterson, collaborator.
In Their Time (working title)
August 27 – December 20, 2024
This exhibition considers objects in the museums’ permanent collection and discusses if, how, and when the objects are evaluated and judged by curators and audiences over time. When accessioned objects are "museum collection worthy" and, today, these same objects appear dated, perhaps no longer of today's standard. The art did not change; aesthetic tastes and judgment have evolved. This exhibition raises and explores questions of art criticism, "art is forever," changing tastes, relevancy, curatorial judgments, fluctuating monetary values, and cultural/social values over time, and museums’ responsibilities to future generations--a cornucopia of discussion.
Fairytales from the Permanent Collection
January – July 2025
Christian Petersen Art Museum
Tom Stancliffe
August – December 2023
This exhibition is a unique opportunity to view both studio works of art by a local public artist who is an integral part of the University Museums’ Art on Campus Collection. Not only is Tom Stancliffe a gifted artist, but he has dedicated years of his career to building up the Public Art Incubator at UNI, which continues to teach students in the processes of creating public art, and conserving works of art to be enjoyed for years to come. Many objects within the Art on Campus Collection have been conserved by the hands of Tom Stancliffe and the Public Art Incubator. Through this exhibition, his studio works of art will be highlighted, and his contributions to public art within the state of Iowa will be celebrated as well.
This exhibition featuring many newly created works of art will explore how the materiality of the object and its form assists in conveying the feeling of the world as the artist experiences it, and the concept of displacement is prominent. Societal order is disrupted as climate change, politics, and even the act of changing the Iowa landscape to produce crops displaces that which we once understood as having an order within our landscape and society.
Farm House Museum
Yuletide
November – December 2023
World Fairs, Expositions & Centennial Celebrations of the Victorian Era
February – October 2024
Between 1851 and 1910, there were 13 major World’s Fairs or Expositions. Fairs and Expositions were wildly popular attractions and extremely costly to create. Though the first major fairs were in Europe, the trend quickly moved to the U.S. Through exhibitions, architecture, and access to “far away” cultures, these European and U.S. events became epicenters for the exchange of knowledge, a show of nationalism, and unique innovations through industrialization. Decorative art objects were key catalysts in illustrating to attendees Victorian ideals, trends, and “best taste.”
This exhibition illustrates through objects and narrative the earliest World’s Fair in 1851 London through several in Paris and the Centennial and World’s Columbian Exhibitions in the United States. The objects tell the story of how glass, pottery, sculpture, and other arts were innovative for their time and on-trend or trendsetters for the movements of the Victorian Era, Japanese influences on Western art, and Art Nouveau. These major public events full of over-the-top fanfare gave access to wide audiences, often millions, while revealing to attendees the peoples and cultures from the furthest of lands.
Yuletide
November – December 2024
Anderson Sculpture Garden
Tom Stancliffe
September 2023 – July 2025
Large-scale sculptures by Tom Stancliffe will be featured in the Anderson Sculpture Garden for two years allowing students, faculty, and visitors to the University to take in Stancliffe’s work within the context of the University campus architecture, the changing seasons, and in conversation with the plantings within the Anderson Sculpture Garden.