Before the Pollock uproar...

Wow, what a week last week was! With all the coverage of the regents requesting a study to assess the worth of the Pollock, the Wednesday media tour of Art Building West and the Museum of Art was a bit overshadowed. But in case you missed it, here are some links to the coverage:

The Des Moines Register
The Press-Citizen and here
The Gazette

To summarize: The past couple weeks, the University of Iowa has been leading the media through some of the flood damaged buildings, giving everyone a chance to see how the cleanup is progressing and ask questions. Last Wednesday, UIMA Interim Director Pamela White joined UI School of Art and Art History Professor Steve McGuire to lead the media through the Museum of Art (UIMA) and Art Building West (ABW), respectively. Jane Meyer, senior associate director of athletics, who has been on loan to UI Facilities Management to oversee the UI's building-by-building post-flood cleanup efforts, and Ann Rosenthal, a senior engineer with UI Facilities Management, joined them.

Ann stressed that the major difference between the arts campus buildings and the other buildings the media has toured, such as Becker Communications Building, the English-Philosophy Building, and Adler Journalism Building, is that the damage to the arts campus was much worse. There was more water inside the buildings -- 4-6 feet in the case of ABW -- and it took longer for the buildings to be accessible. So, the future of the arts campus is still quite unknown. "We don't have all the deadlines. We don't know how this is going to come through with insurance and FEMA," said Jane Meyer (pictured below in ABW).
Steve McGuire talked a bit about how art and art history students will be affected. Most of the studio art classes will be held in the old Menards building out on Highway 1, and art history classes will be in various locations throughout campus (mostly in Seashore Hall). Buses have been arranged to take students out to the old Menards, and class schedules have been altered to make time for transport.
Above: The inside of ABW, completely stripped down. Below: Two pictures of the outside, where you can see just how high the water was. Ann Rosenthal said that there some debate about whether the water marks should be left on the building. Some people think it should be restored to its original state, while others believe that the flood is now a part of the history of the building, and as such its marks should remain. What do you think?
Pam White (pictured below) talked about how the Museum will be striving to have a presence on campus this fall by holding events and exhibitions in alternate locations and potentially touring parts of the collection to other Iowa museums. Plenty going on nowadays!