Flood took its toll on Corridor’s art treasures

Realism melted into surrealism for the protectors of the Corridor's iconic art, who watched in horror as the Floods of 2008 trashed their venues and threatened the pieces held most dear at home and abroad:

• The world's most extensive collection of Grant Wood works, at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.
• Jackson Pollock's massive "Mural" oil painting, insured for $140 million, at the University of Iowa Museum of Art.
• Grant Wood's soaring stained glass window, now valued at $3 million, in the Veterans Memorial Building in downtown Cedar Rapids.
• Two ornate movie palace theater organs -- more rare by the day -- enchanting audiences since 1928 at the Paramount Theatre and the Iowa Theater Building in downtown Cedar Rapids.

"Surreal" is the word the stewards all used this month as they reminisced about the push-up-your-sleeves and jump-in-the-water efforts to save millions of dollars of fine art in the wake of a flood more epic in scope than any had imagined.

"This was a very surreal situation," Sean Ulmer, curator at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, said. "One that you never even contemplate, one that you don't expect, and you just go through it -- you just get through it, and you don't think about it. You're doing what's necessary to get the job done."

Both Corridor museums had to quickly figure out how to move thousands of pieces of art out of harm's way as the waters rose. Everything had to leave the UI facility, which was ruined by the flood and whose future is still being decided five years later.

Cedar Rapids museum staff and volunteers formed an old-fashioned firemen's chain of about 20 people at any given time, working in near darkness to pass pieces from the basement storage space to higher ground. The glow from a couple of flashlights wasn't enough to prevent executive director Terry Pitts from tripping over a statue and splashing down in 9 inches of fetid water that entered via the sewers.

At Theatre Cedar Rapids, staff and volunteers also waded in near darkness in the basement, breaking a couple of glow-in-the-dark necklaces and tossing them on the water to help guide them, said Executive Director Casey Prince. Attention turned toward moving the Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre's costumes and scenery out of the building so that show could go on. The theater itself went dark, moving operations to temporary quarters by Lindale Mall through restoration work.

TCR became one of the first Corridor arts venues to reopen, staging a gala return in February 2010 with a rousing Mel Brooks musical comedy, "The Producers."

Other venues have followed suit, the most recent being the reopening of the Paramount Theatre last November. The UI's Hancher programming continues to be on the move, utilizing about a dozen area venues until a new auditorium opens on high ground in 2016.

CEDAR RAPIDS MUSEUM OF ART

Of the museum's 7,000-plus pieced stored in the basement, the Grant Wood holdings were the top priority in moving the inventory to higher ground. "We basically handed them from person to person to person" up the stairwells, Ulmer said. A clean room was quickly established on the first floor, where every piece was inspected before going to the second floor. "Ninety percent of the collection is irreplaceable," Pitts said.

Damaged pieces went to Chicago and Los Angeles for conservation. The heaviest sculptures were too heavy to move out of the basement in those early days. "We were very fortunate to have only 200 pieces be affected," Ulmer said. Of those, only five couldn't be restored.

"According to the conservators who came in right afterwards, we did all the right things," Pitts said. "Something worked right in our training."

The museum reopened with an exhibition of The Gazette's flood photos on Aug. 30, 2008. Part of this year's $1.3 million capital campaign will further the museum's flood mitigation efforts, installing sewer backflow prevention valves so the sewers will not be able to back-up again.

POLLOCK/UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

Of the 12,000 objects that had to leave the UI Museum of Art, moving Jackson Pollock's 1943 seminal oil painting, "Mural," was the top priority, but no quick and easy feat. Measuring 8 by 20 feet and weighing 300 pounds, it can't be simply lifted off the wall, wrapped and placed on a truck. A special crate was built in Chicago, so on day three of the museum's evacuation, the prized painting was transported to Chicago.

It moved to the Figge Art Museum in Davenport in April 2009, then to the Des Moines Art Center from April to July in 2012. It was not damaged in the flood or subsequent moves, but is showing its age, beginning to sag because of its size and weight. So in August 2012, it was shipped to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles for two years of conservation and study. It will leave in the summer of 2014.

Sean O'Harrow, director of the UI museum, said he's still trying to figure out the logistics of possibly mounting a tour to bring more widespread attention to the piece, the university and the state.

"It is the most important painting in the state of Iowa, if not in the country, in some ways. There are a lot of people who view that painting as the single most important painting in American modern art, particularly at the beginning of the movement known as abstract expressionism," O'Harrow said. "This is why there's so much attention being paid to it at Getty Museum in L.A. ...

"We and the people of Iowa should be forever grateful that the Getty been so generous and willing to work on our masterpiece and America's masterpiece."

THEATER ORGANS

The Mighty Wurlitzer in the Paramount Theatre and the Rhinestone Barton at Theatre Cedar Rapids were raised as high as their performance platforms would go. That wasn't high enough. As the waters roared through the Paramount, the organ console was lifted off the platform and smashed onto the stage floor. At TCR, the waters rose calmly, submerging all but the very top of the Barton console.

The result was the same. Both consoles were damaged beyond repair and the pipes and instruments for both organ systems -- although housed high aloft in chambers flanking both stages -- still sustained enough damage that they needed to be removed and sent to Chicago and Reno, Nev., for repairs.

The next console off the Wurlitzer assembly line in 1928 was found, purchased and decorated to look like the ornate buttercream Mighty Wurlitzer, and is housed in a new concrete bunker below the Paramount stage. A replica black Rhinestone Barton console was built in Reno and now sits on a rolling platform near the TCR orchestra pit.

Both can be rolled onto new platforms and raised to stage height in the dramatic fashion that delighted nearly a century of audiences. Both also can quickly be disconnected from new mechanical works and rolled out of the theater and onto a truck, should anything ever threaten them in the future.

Both are nearly ready to sing again. Orchestra Iowa will trumpet the Mighty Wurlitzer's return during a March 8 performance of Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony No. 2.

Barton restoration work, estimated at $240,000, is being funded through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, since the organ is owned by a private organization, Cedar Rapids Barton Inc. The city owns the Wurlitzer, estimated at $300,000 to repair, paid through city insurance funds.

GRANT WOOD WINDOW

The floodwaters that submerged May's Island didn't actually touch the 20-by-24-foot Grant Wood stained glass window, commissioned for the the Veterans Memorial Building that opened in 1929.

Uncontrolled atmospheric changes indoors and out sent more than 100 cracks rippling through the one-of-a-kind window. It's a fanfare to the common soldiers and sailors who fought in six wars, from the Revolutionary War to World War I, welcomed home by a larger-than-life angel of peace.

In late 2009, all 57 window panels were removed, one-by-one, packed in Styrofoam-type crash-proof containers and trucked to Glass Heritage in Davenport. Over the course of a year, more than 9,000 individual stained glass pieces were cleaned, restored and reassembled, for about $350,000. The window was reinstalled in mid-2010 and is now encased in protective frames with filtered vents, to prevent damage from the "wild temperature changes" that damaged it in the wake of the flood, said Mike Jager, executive director of the Veterans Memorial Commission.

Glass Heritage artisans were onsite the second week of May to conduct routine cleaning and maintenance, getting the window ready for its close-up. The public will be invited inside the lobby during the Fourth of July week, to bask in the vibrant, historic glow as sunlight streams through the kaleidoscope of colors.