Looking Ahead

Things are slowly but surely progressing here at the UIMA. As detailed in today's newsletter, the Museum staff will be moving from Macbride Hall (where we've been sharing offices with the Museum of Natural History) to the Studio Arts Building (the old Menards) in the coming weeks. That facility is currently housing the studio arts area of the School of Art and Art History.

This larger space will reunite the staff with the Museum collection files, which contain detailed information about the history of each artwork in the UIMA collection. This information is needed for research and to explore the possibility of traveling exhibitions from the UIMA collection. In addition, the space will have room for storage of materials salvaged from the Museum building, including tools, furniture, and goods from the Museum Store and Coffee Bar.

The move to the Studio Arts Building is very temporary, and does not allow access to any work from the UIMA collection. Plans are currently underway to create two more long-term temporary spaces that would provide student access to key works from the UIMA collection. First, Special Collections at the UI Libraries has provided room for two boxes of prints, a key component of many classes, including a "History of Prints" class being taught this fall. This space could be available as soon as next week. In addition, creating a secure space at the Iowa Memorial Union for parts of the African and Ceramics collections, as well as the UIMA staff, is being explored. It is unknown how long that process will take, as the IMU is itself recovering from flood damage. Until this project is complete, the UIMA staff will remain at the Studio Arts Building temporarily -- possibly a year or more.

The long-term future of the Museum is still to-be-determined, but UI President Sally Mason has expressed a firm commitment to the arts at Iowa and the Museum of Art. She has said that art will not go back into the old UIMA building because it is too risky -- instead, we can expect and look forward a new, state-of-the art Museum facility. This is a very long-term project that will require much planning, so stay tuned, and we'll keep you updated with new information as the things progress!