Complementary exhibits coloring Cedar Rapids Museum of Art galleries

With his father’s blessing, Byron Burford ran off to join the circus at age 14. His father thought a few days as a roadie with the Tom Mix Circus would satisfy the youth.

Instead, it sparked a lifelong interest for the celebrated artist who studied under, then worked alongside Grant Wood as a professor of painting at the University of Iowa.

Born July 12, 1920, in Jackson, Miss., he was raised in Greenville, Miss., and died June 17, 2011, in Iowa City, at age 90. His career at the UI spanned 38 years. He also continued playing drums in circus bands and painting the people in the circus troupes.

A retrospective of Burford’s artistry is on view through Oct. 29, 2023, at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, in the middle of two first-floor galleries. The exhibit contains about 20 works from the museum’s collection, in sizes large to small, “and everything in between,” curator Kate Kunau said.

“We are focusing on his circus imagery, because that is what he’s best known for, and we’re doing it in a variety of media,” Kunau said. “Even his paintings involve collage elements. … He works mostly in oil, but he also does prints, engravings, acrylics (and) he uses hot wax on his canvases. So we’re focusing on his paintings and collages mostly.”

As for subject matter, “he’s definitely interested in the people of the circus — both singular and in large groups together,” Kunau added.

She is especially drawn toward two of Burford’s largest works.

“I think the favorite piece is probably a monumental painting of Lilli-Ana, who’s a beautiful showgirl in all of her fancy garb. There’s some leopard print, there’s feathers — it’s all very glowing and brightly colored. I think she’s probably the showpiece of the exhibition,” Kunau said.

“There’s also an equally large painting called ‘B.J. with Inflatables,’ which is a clown making balloon animals.”

It’s definitely a family-friendly exhibition, on view in time for the holiday season.

“Certainly the subject matter is very approachable,” Kunau said. “And because he uses so many different techniques, it’s a good way to introduce children and other people who might not be as involved in the art world, to different techniques.

“He does a lot of cutout magazine and newspaper collage pieces, which are really fun,” she noted. “There's some print work in the exhibition — he made a lot of circus posters. It's very brightly colored, and the subject matter is really vibrant and engaging.

“And it’s going to be up for almost a year, so we’re excited about it. We think it’s a good, good exhibition for everyone.”

The museum will be closed on Thanksgiving, but Kunau said the day after Thanksgiving “is actually usually a pretty big day for us.”

More new exhibits

Visitors also can see two other new exhibits: “Chunghi Choo: Visionary” and “The Collector's Eye: The Collection of Thomas C. Jackson and Joanne Stevens.”

Choo, a jewelry maker and metalsmith from Incheon, South Korea, also taught at the University of Iowa from 1968 to 2015. She still resides in Iowa City.

“Chunghi Choo really set the jewelry and metal arts program at the University of Iowa,” Kunau said. “She was one of the first professors on that. Her work is everywhere,” from London and Paris to Philadelphia, Copenhagen, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and closer to home, at the Art Institute of Chicago.

“She’s a really big deal in jewelry making and metal work,” Kunau added.

The Choo exhibition features about 40 works, displayed in two galleries on the second floor. They range from everyday items like flatware and a floor lamp, to much larger sculptural pieces, as well as necklaces and brooches.

“She works in aluminum and brass mesh, as well as metal and ceramic, which is really interesting,” Kunau said, adding that Choo “works in very bright colors. There’s a lot of saturated red and gold and purple and blue. It’s a really fun and bright exhibition.”

Thomas C. Jackson also is a well-known local artist, and he and his wife, of Cedar Rapids, are sharing about 45 pieces they’ve collected, on exhibit in the three back galleries on the museum’s main floor.

“Tom and Joanne have a spectacular collection of modern and contemporary print work,” Kunau said. “The (museum) is really strong in our print collection, but (contemporary) is the area where we’re lightest, so this isn’t an exhibition that we could have done for our permanent collection. …

“They know what artists are good, and they’re choosing works that they respond to. And so we just emptied out their whole house. We went over and just stripped the walls clean, and they very graciously lent them to us,” Kunau said. “It’s definitely art that they love and that they live with every day.”

Social justice is a recurring theme in the couple’s collection.

“They are interested in art as a method of social justice, and so there are a lot of pieces by artists of color that deal with issues of social justice in various ways,” Kunau said. “Aesthetically, I think it’s a really graphically strong exhibition. All of the pieces are just really excellent examples of that artist’s work. They have a really good eye for what’s one piece that could stand in for the entirety of this artist, and then taking that piece.”

Since exhibitions typically are planned two or three years out, “all of these have actually been in the offing for quite some time,“ Kunau said. ”The fact that they are all together is a little bit of COVID serendipity. I think we initially had some of them planned for different slots, but things got shifted because of COVID, so they’re happening now.

“But I think they all go really well together,” Kunau noted. “They're all extremely strong, bright, vibrant, fascinating exhibitions. And they’re all things that we as a museum like to focus on. We like to focus on local artists, which Chunghi Choo and Byron Burford are, and local collections, which is Tom and Joanne. So it’s really reinforcing our mission statement of looking at what is immediately around us, and celebrating that.”

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com