News Track: Pollock’s ‘Mural’ returning stateside

Like the rest of the University of Iowa Museum of Art's expansive collection since the devastating flood of 2008, its Jackson Pollock 'Mural” has been in a nomadic state for years.

The internationally celebrated original, which was donated to the UI in 1947, was taken in by the Figge Museum in Davenport after the flood. It began its high-profile travels in earnest while undergoing a research and conservation process at the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles between 2012 and 2014.

Since 2014, 'Mural” has been a part of exhibitions at the Getty, attracting an audience of 304,349; at the Sioux City Art Center, drawing 30,945; at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy, bringing in 253,590; at the Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle in Berlin, Germany, to an audience of 71,408; at the Museo Picasso Malaga in Spain, where 317,905 people viewed it; at the Royal Academy of Art in London, attracting 317,905; and at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, with attendance topping 356,641.

Total attendance for those exhibitions exceeded 1 million.

WHAT'S HAPPENED SINCE

Back on the UI campus, administrators have been making progress toward building a new UI Art Museum, replacing the old one that was deemed unsuitable for artwork after the flood.

In Board of Regents documents released earlier this month, the university laid out plans for a $50 million, 45,000-square-foot Museum of Art on UI-owned land above the 500-year flood plain just south of the UI Main Library.

The project, which would consolidate and display the UI's more than 12,400-piece art collection valued at more than $500 million and provide offices, conference rooms, classrooms and parking stalls, is expected to open in 2019.

'There has already been a lot of discussion and planning to take advantage of all the new opportunities for study and audience engagement in the new building,” Kathy Edwards, UI art museum senior curator, said in a statement.

After its extensive international circuit, the Pollock 'Mural” next month is returning to the United States for a three-museum tour.

Starting July 8, the UI Museum of Art will lend the piece to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo. That exhibition, which ends Oct. 29, will be followed by one at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., from November through October 2018. 'Mural” then will go to the Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, S.C., from November 2018 to May 2019, according to UI officials.

Officials have said they aim to return the Pollock to campus when the new space opens.

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