Stanley Museum of Art — Attraction in Iowa City

Situated in a sleek building that was newly opened in 2022, the Stanley Museum of Art is a pleasure to visit: there is comfy seating in the common area penetrated by natural light, and the two terraces on the top floor invite you to contemplate on your art experience on a warm day. Plus, admission is free, and the Museum is steps away from the soothing Iowa River Corridor Trail to its west.

This is a university museum, so the square footage isn't that large. Gift shop is almost non-existent (yes, "almost", as you can purchase a few things from their front desk), and there is no café onsite (to be fair, you are only a few minutes' walk away from the downtown shopping and dining area to the east).

Galleries are all located on the second floor (as of November 2024). While the exhibition space is not large either, the curatorial team does a great job of showcasing the Stanley Museum's stellar African art collection. And with big names like Jackson Pollock and Grant Wood on display, fans of Western modern art will also not be disappointed. In addition, there are several beautiful installations such as those of Pueblo pottery and Yoruba twin figures.

Exhibit labels are generally both informative and reflective, though unsurprisingly they lean toward an art historical approach in which the main focus is on connoisseurship and provenance rather than the ethnographic context of the artworks (African art in particular). Rarity and traditionality of the pieces are sometimes emphasized, but it must also be pointed out that changes in art forms are acknowledged by the curators, and they often avoid essentializing the cultures they try to represent, as well as ask contemporarily relevant questions in the labels they wrote. For example, "[a]t what point does the style of a single artist's hand refer to one ethnicity or another?", and "[h]ow does the removal of a reliquary guardian figure from the site it was meant to protect impact its community of origin?"

Lastly, few of the Stanley Museum's Asian and Pre-Columbian collections were on view at the time I visited. Will they retain and rotate part of their permanent collection in the galleries after the inaugural "Homecoming" exhibition concludes next summer, or will they devote most of their space to special exhibitions? That overall curatorial decision remains to...

Would love to give a 5 star review but I left feeling very annoyed and unwelcome. I went for a class and had a clip board and I got yelled at for “touching” the sculptures when I only pointed about an inch away. Then I was told from the security guard “I shouldn’t be that close” but yet the sculptures weren’t inside of cases. He was not very nice about it either, kind of just acted arrogant and rude when I explained I didn’t touch anything. He seemed to try and intimidate me or something, I just didn’t like the entire aura he gave off and made me not want to visit again. He followed and lurked around every corner that I walked around which just made me even more annoyed like I was doing something wrong...

I came into this art museum with incredibly high expectations and they were met and exceeded in every way possible. The variety, quality, and uniqueness to this collection is comparable to what one would expect from an art museum in a major city. The university of Iowa has acquired such a phenomenal collection over the decades and it is fantastic that the collection finally has a proper home in such a beautiful and spacious building. This museum is going to provide such a high caliber of educational opportunities for this community and the entire...