Description

For more than seventy-five years, the School of Art and Art History at The University of Iowa has collected thousands of artworks by artists attending the School's graduate studio programs. Each graduate student was asked to leave behind a work they completed during their graduate studies; the resulting School of Art and Art History Graduate Collection contains over 6,000 paintings, prints, photographs, sculptures and other art objects. Within the last few years, the School has been collecting slides and digital images from graduate students while they can still donate works to the collection. The Archive is unique in the country and provides a critical overview of the developments in American art over much of the last century. The quality of the Collection is remarkable and reflects the extraordinary reputation of the School and its graduate alumni. The Collection contains works by notable artists who studied at the School, including painter Ellen Lanyon, whose work can be seen at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago; Elizabeth Catlett, famous African-American sculptor; Miriam Shapiro, painter/sculptor, co-originator of the feminist art program at the California Institute of Arts and co-founder of the Feminist Art Institute of New York City; Thomas Lawton, retired director of the Freer Gallery of Chinese Art, and Roy Sieber, former co-director of the Museum of African Art, both of the Smithsonian Institutions, among many, many others. The School of Art and Art History has played a crucial role in the history of American...