Curator Julia Jessen gathers up surprises for her inaugural exhibit at Cedar Rapids Museum of Art

With more than 8,000 works of art at her gloved fingertips, one of Julia Jessen’s first tasks as the new curator at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art was pulling together an exhibition of surprising discoveries.

Poring over the racks and stacks and files, she narrowed her list to 120 pieces, then cut that in half, to showcase 60 works from the museum’s permanent collection.

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She didn’t receive a lot of instruction or parameters from the staff.

“I think they really wanted me to take the time and really see what jumped out at me,” she said. “I don’t think anyone wanted to give me too much direction, which I appreciated. I asked a few questions whenever I needed to.”

The result is “Surprise! The New Curator’s Surprise Finds in the Collection,” which opens Saturday, Sept. 30, and continues through Jan. 21, 2024, in the three back galleries on the museum’s main floor. A free reception for that exhibition, as well as for “Adam Rake: World Lines,” will be held from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 28.

Discoveries

Jessen, 31, of Coralville, joined the museum staff July 10 and that first week, launched the search for her “getting-acquainted” exhibition, where she found surprises at every turn.

What surprised her the most was the depth and breadth of the museum’s holdings.

The “Harry Potter” fan’s heart leapt when she discovered “Chess Game,” by Mary GrandPre, whose illustrations grace the covers and chapters in U.S. editions of the Harry Potter books.

“That piece itself was a fun surprise to come across,” Jessen said.

“I’m a millennial, and Harry Potter was a big part of my childhood, like so many in my generation and in surrounding generations as well, so that was very cool to come across.”

She also was surprised to learn from Executive Director Sean Ulmer about the museum’s history of exhibiting illustration art and highlighting illustration artists.

“I’ve included a few other pieces that relate to that idea of illustration, or even comic books and cartoons that are part of this institution,” Jessen noted.

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Along those lines is Chris Vance’s 2017 mixed media work, “Big Top.”

“That’s another very fun one,” she said. “Vance’s work is really fun, because he brings in some of those cartoon elements … graffiti elements, some skateboard culture, as well. It’s very fun and kind of chaotic, but it seems to fit very well into this type of exhibition.”

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Finding ways to create conversations between quirky pieces and traditional works — by well-known local artists like Mel Andringa, Stan Wiederspan and David Van Allen, and legendary artists like Grant Wood and Andy Warhol — has been challenging and illuminating.

“It was really fun to put our local artists together with some of these very famous names from the canon of art history,” she said. “It’s really wonderful to see them together in these galleries.”

Building the show

Working without a theme, however, was a bit more daunting.

“It was something that I was a little bit worried about, as I was making my list and trying to figure out how this would come together in the end, because it is so open-ended,” Jessen said. Building a show around a central theme is much easier, she noted.

“I am including a lot of very disparate work that might not have an immediate connection that you can make between them,” she said.

But she didn’t want to limit herself by forcing connections. Making little pictures of each work helped the process, moving them around to see how they might play off each other visually and conceptually.

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“I was a little surprised by some of the connections that I found between works,” she said, adding that some of those connections might be as simple as pairing works featuring figures in a similar pose.

“I had to kind of mix things up again and again, because sometimes there are works that you end up not including in a wall that then you don’t really know what to do with. And you have to kind of play around until you’re happy with where you have a new position,” she said.

“I think there are some really interesting conversations happening between the works with how they’re positioned right now. And I think visitors to the museum will see some of those conversations. And I think they’ll also make their own connections, even if the pieces aren’t positioned closely together. They may have their own kind of references and associations that then inspire new connections that they notice but I wasn’t thinking about. I think it should be really fun.”

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Because she could build the show her way, it “does feel like a more personal exhibition than exhibitions typically are — which feels a little strange,” she said.

“But I think this has also been a really wonderful experience, too, and it just turned out really nicely. I’m really happy with the way the exhibition has come together.”

Adam Rake: World Lines

Also new this fall is “World Lines,” an exhibition by Iowa City artist Adam Rake, on view through Jan. 7 in the second-floor back gallery.

His works “explore the complex ways in which the meaning of a work of art changes over time as technology and culture evolve.”

“For a lot of the pieces, he has actually taken famous works of art throughout art history and brought them into his studio and spent time with them and altered them, added to them, took away from them,” Jessen said. “He wanted to get to know them within his own practice.

“He’s really interested in how the meaning changes over time, and how the meaning of these works of art changes over time — how the meaning changes with the advent of technology. Today, so many of us are experiencing artwork through teeny tiny phone screens or tablet screens. And so he’s thinking about those changes — the way that art changes over time as far as how we experience it, how its meaning is understood and made through those artworks.

“They’re very interesting pieces,” she said. “A lot of them are very large scale, and he’s incorporated a lot of different little details. He’s brought in details of his own life and his own artistic practice. Sometimes scientific phenomena are present in the works, as well.

“They’re works that really reward close looking and time spent in front of the piece. I encourage all of our visitors to do that — to really make the time to look for a long time — look closely and encounter all of these different details.”

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