Worth more than money

Jackson Pollock's "Mural" is a mesmerizing 8-foot by 20-foot forest of -- squiggles, as far as I can tell.

I must have been sucked into it at least a dozen times while visiting the University of Iowa Museum of Art, but don't ask me what it's about.

Some historians think it might be hiding Pollock's name. Pollock himself called it a stampede.

But when one Republican state representative from Urbandale looks at "Mural", he sees dollar signs -- about $140 million of them.

Rep. Scott Raecker, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, introduced a bill last week which would force the UI to sell "Mural" and collect the cash.

I'm with the folks who think it's a pretty shortsighted idea ("Next week, melt the gold off the dome of the Old Capitol and pawn it to the Gold Guys," Sen. Joe Bolkcom, D-Iowa City, wrote in a constituent newsletter). But you've got to admit it's a practical one.

As Raecker asked a reporter: "If we have an asset valued at $100 million to $150 million, it had been in storage in Chicago, now at a museum at Davenport, are we not better served to have those resources deployed to actually educate Iowa students in the arts?"

Sell the painting, he says, and use the interest from an endowment to fund $5 million in annual scholarships for resident UI art majors.

Raecker's not talking about burning the Library of Alexandria here. His bill requires any sale to include a provision that "Mural" come home to the UI for a few months every four years for those students to study it.

"But what will you do with it," is a question philosophy majors have been answering about their studies for generations. Now it's the institutions that are being asked to explain themselves.

It makes some sense, as tuition and student debt keep rising, to ask universities to prove their practical worth.

What doesn't always make sense is to measure that worth in dollars.

As museum Director Sean O'Harrow said when the idea of selling the Pollock came up after the 2008 flood: "It's like selling your grandmother."

No one had seen anything like "Mural" before its 1943 unveiling. Now, it's considered one of the most important modern American paintings.

As a piece of history and culture, "Mural" is rare and irreplaceable -- much like the idea of university as a place to learn more than a trade. A time to ask bigger questions and explore the answers.

As a time and place for saying: "I don't know what that is or what it means. I've never even dreamed of such a thing.

"But you know what? I think I like it."

Comments: (319) 339-3154;  jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net