Local history, U.S. politics on view at Cedar Rapids Museum of Art

CEDAR RAPIDS — The evolution of the city of Cedar Rapids and American politics are ready to spark conversations at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art as 2024 slides into 2025.

Those conversations can take many forms: conversations between viewer and artwork, between generations, between the pieces in each exhibition, and between people exploring them in the first- and second-floor galleries.

“Inspired by Cedar Rapids: 175 Years of Art” opens Oct. 5 and continues through Jan. 19 in the main floor’s back three galleries. “A More Perfect Union: Political Art from the Collection” continues through Jan. 5 in the back gallery upstairs.

Conversation starters

“In the politics exhibition, if some of these things that we think about strike a chord with people, I think that’ll be interesting,” curator Julia Jessen said, citing “the power of imagery — the way that images are able to create an impression or an idea in the mind. It'll be interesting if that generates conversation.

“But I’m also fascinated to see where it goes beyond even what I had in mind with the exhibition — and with ‘Cedar Rapids.’

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“I hope that people think, too, about this long history that Cedar Rapids has of fostering this artistic community and how that continues today,” she said. “I think it’ll be really interesting to hear the reflections from people as they spend time in that exhibition. There may be things that bring up some of that nostalgia for people … and I'm looking forward to hearing how some of those things connect with what they see today, as well, in the artistic world in Cedar Rapids.”

With the current divisive political climate, the museum isn’t seeking to sway viewers toward either party or view on hot-button issues. The works vary, from presidential portraits and Norman Rockwell’s famous voting scene, to the artists’ responses to what was happening around them in America’s political landscape.

“Since it is a show that is thinking about political imagery, I think that a viewer can take things in whatever way they happen to take them,” Jessen said. “So something that is entirely innocuous to one person may be one of those hot-button things for someone else. And I think in art museums, there tends to be a lot of that in a lot of different types of exhibitions.

“This one is not corresponding to any certain political party. It doesn’t go in one of those directions. Instead, it just presents these images from the collection that are dealing with politics,” she said. “I think a viewer can walk in and take that in, and think about it in a multitude of different ways, but it will be interesting to hear the responses, to hear the conversation. Something that we always like in museums are exhibitions that generate conversation, and so I’ll be interested to hear what people have to say about the exhibition.”

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Artists not only can capture a moment in time, but also can use their talents to freely express their personal views.

“I think artists oftentimes are able to, through their work, hold up a mirror to society,” Jessen said. “Their personal interpretation comes through, and how they do that in the way that society is reflected back to itself. That’s always going to have some of the flavor of the artists coming through there.

“But I think through the nature of art, they’re able to highlight things in a way that perhaps people don’t expect, and it allows the viewer to maybe consider things in a way that they hadn’t before. It may give them more questions perhaps than they started with. They may find that they actually don’t understand something as well as they thought they did before, or it may reinforce the things that they already thought, as well.

“There’s one artist in the show who, in his work, was initially inspired by what he was seeing in political campaigns and how political campaigns used images to create a certain idea in a viewer or a voter’s mind. That really led him down a road of thinking about the power of images and what they’re able to convey and to do. That’s something that’s really interesting to think about, both in the artworks that we see in this exhibition, and what they communicate and what they do, but also in the images that we see around us all the time, whether that’s right now during this political campaign season, or whether it’s just advertising images — the things that surround us all the time.

“Visual literacy is something that’s really interesting to think about, and question how things are being presented.”

Building the shows

Jessen, who joined the museum staff July 10, 2023, drew upon the experiences and institutional knowledge of executive director Sean Ulmer to help find the 45 pieces for “Inspired by Cedar Rapids: 175 Years of Art.”

“When I heard we were having this big anniversary year in 2024, I thought it would be interesting to see if we could do something that tied into that,” Jessen said, “using our collection to be able to celebrate that anniversary and show how this city has fostered this artistic interest for these very many years.”

So she and Ulmer walked together through the vast storage area, searching for paintings, drawings and other pieces reflecting city landmarks, sites and people. Jessen also looked through the museum’s database and searched the storage area on her own, in what turned out to be a dayslong process.

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“It’s time consuming,” she said. “It takes a while to figure out what makes sense for an exhibition like this.”

And when she was unsure whether the subject tied to Cedar Rapids or not, she reached out for confirmation to curators Stefanie Kohn at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library and Tara Templeman at The History Center. Not only did they say, yes, that looks like a Czech folk costume, or yes, that building was in Cedar Rapids, but their expertise helped give Jessen more information on the artworks, to develop better description labels now and for future showings.

The exhibition includes oil- and watercolor paintings, photography, a couple of Dick Pinney’s wooden pieces and one of his drawings, other drawings, prints, some ceramics, and a fiber piece that looks like a tree stump, created by avant-garde artist Cat Chow when she came from New York for a 2006 exhibit at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.

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Jessen also got to create the “More Perfect Union” exhibition, built around the theme of American politics.

“It’s timely,” she said. “Obviously, we’re in an election year, and I thought it would be interesting to, again, look to the collection, draw from the collection, and see what we had that could reflect and connect to this idea of politics in art and how that’s represented in our collection.”

She found prints, paintings, photographs, ceramics, paper, one that incorporates metal, and a plate hand-painted by a formerly incarcerated artist, who “often amplifies the voices of other incarcerated individuals,” Jessen noted. “So I think that’s an interesting piece that’s in the show.”

A work that captures a historic moment in time in Andy Warhol’s “Jackie III,” which shows four views of the former first lady, smiling in one and in mourning in others. It also shows the intersection of politics and the creation of celebrity pop culture icons, Jessen said.

Cedar Rapids connection

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But Norman Rockwell’s familiar “Election Day, 1944” gave her a starting point.

“Thinking about pieces that are representing the act of democracy, the act of voting, but also representations of political candidates, presidents, whether those are presidential portraits that are photographic or representations of candidates and presidents by artists, (and) critiques through art of policy,” she said.

“Sometimes the images are celebrating the act of democracy in politics, and other times they’re more critical and thinking thoughtfully about different policy positions and questioning and critiquing those in the work. There’s some civil rights photography that’s included as well, from both local and national sources.”

“Election Day, 1944” is especially significant for Cedar Rapids. It’s one of five paintings emerging from Rockwell’s brief stay in Cedar Rapids.

As reported in The Gazette previewing a 2009 exhibition of these works at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art: The Nov. 4, 1944, issue of the Saturday Evening Post brought Norman Rockwell's "Election Day, 1944" watercolor series into American homes, proclaiming Cedar Rapids the "quintessential Midwestern town."

Then-curator Sean Ulmer noted the famed artist and illustrator hired Wes Panek of Cedar Rapids to photograph local residents posed in vignettes that would later become part of the paintings.

Panek took the photos in one day at the old Cleveland Elementary School in northwest Cedar Rapids and printed them overnight. Rockwell took those black-and-white photo studies back to his Vermont studio, and using a few others taken in Vermont, pieced them together to create the scenes.

It’s a piece of Cedar Rapids history preserved for all time.

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