Iowa City Public Library’s art purchase prize contest returns

IOWA CITY — Local artists are invited to help the Iowa City Public Library give its art collection a “spring refresh.”

After a hiatus because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Art Purchase Prize contest is back. Local artists are asked to submit original work, which if selected will be added to the library’s Art-to-Go collection.

“It's one of my favorite things I do here,” Librarian Candice Smith said about the contest. “It's a great interaction, both with the art community and then also with the people who volunteer to be on the art committee.”

The Art-to-Go collection started in the 1960s, Smith said. Now, there are about 400 pieces of art to choose from.

Anyone with an Iowa City library card is able to check out art from the collection for up to eight weeks. Patrons can check out up to two pieces at a time.

The collection is on the first floor between the fiction books and the children’s room. Artwork is displayed on the walls and stacked in the bins against the wall.

Smith said university students have come in to check out art for their apartments or sometimes art teachers have come in to check out pieces to show their students.

The contest started a couple decades after the collection began. While Smith isn’t sure exactly when the contest started, she guessed sometime in the early 1980s.

The purchase prize contest is one of the ways the art collection grows. Smith also picks posters to have framed.

Each year about 20 to 30 items are added to the collection, with anywhere from eight to 12 coming from the purchase prize contest, she said.

“To be able to buy that many pieces of original art in any given year is pretty amazing,“ Smith said.

Smith works with the library’s art advisory committee on the purchase prize contest. While Smith isn’t involved in the judging of submissions, she gets to listen to the discussion among committee members.

She finds it interesting to hear what stands out to the committee members since they are often involved in the arts in some way, such as being a teacher, artist or running a gallery. Looking through the submissions also reminds her "how much talent we have in this town.“

“(The committee is) always looking out for the variety of patrons who might come in here to look for something,” Smith said.

Smith said “unique collections” in libraries — such as toys, tools and musical instruments — are growing, but she still gets inquiries from libraries across the country who want to learn more about Iowa City’s art collection and contest.

She has fielded inquires from Minneapolis, New Orleans and Austin, to name a few.

“People are just always surprised, and then they're like ‘I've never heard of a library that does that,’ ” Smith said. “It kind of reinforces, I think, the uniqueness of our library for people.”

Submissions for the purchase prize contest will be accepted from Friday to April 22. More information about the contest and criteria can be found at icpl.org/about/art-prize.

Patrons also can browse the Art-to-Go collection online before stopping into the library.

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