Davenport, Iowa - August 2011 – Architecture students in Iowa State University’s College of Design created designs for the construction of a fictional museum in Columbus, Indiana’s already architecturally diverse community and a selection of those designs will be on view at the Figge Art Museum starting September 3 in the exhibition, Innovative Objects of Design: Museum Proposals for Columbus, Indiana.

The Figge Art Museum is pleased to announce that it has received a grant from Humanities Iowa. The Figge was recently awarded a $5,000 grant for its upcoming exhibition Turn of the Century Posters from the Krannert Art Museum Collection (Sept. 3, 2011 – Jan. 8, 2012).

​The Figge announces the fall exhibition, Restoring the Spirit: Celebrating Haitian Art and the recent reinstallation of the Figge’s Haitian Gallery with an event on May 18. The upcoming exhibition celebrates Haiti’s complex visual traditions and the devotion of artists to creative endeavors in the face of national adversity. The exhibition will open September 17 and run through January 15, 2012.

Life-sustaining yet also destructive, the transformative properties of water play a crucial role in shaping our physical and cultural landscape. On May 7th, the Figge will celebrate the beauty and power of water in the exhibition Water Views from the Figge Collection. Drawing upon its collection of European, American and Japanese paintings and works on paper, the exhibition offers a broad survey of water imagery and explores the cultural perceptions imbedded in them. This exhibition continues through August 21, 2011.

In remembrance of actress Elizabeth Taylor, the Figge will have on view their serigraph Liz Taylor by Andy Warhol. This recognizable work will be on display in the museum lobby from Tuesday, March 29 through Sunday, April 10, 2011.

As part of the UIMA’s partnership with the Figge Art Museum, a gallery of African art opened in the Davenport museum in early December. Curated by Christopher Roy, UI professor of Art History and Elizabeth M. Stanley Faculty Fellow of African Art, Selections from the Stanley Collection features over 30 African objects, and is an ongoing exhibition intended to represent the artistic diversity found throughout the continent.

The arrival of the railroad in the mid-nineteenth century sparked a period of tremendous economic growth that transformed the social and physical landscape of the Quad Cities. Plans for a railroad connecting the Mississippi River to the Atlantic developed as early as 1828 but came to fruition...

This past October, one of the Figge Art Museum’s most treasured Mexican Colonial paintings, Baltasar de Echave Rioja’s La Adoración de los Magos, 1659, Gift of C. A. Ficke, 1925.84, traveled to Madrid, Spain for the exhibition Painting of the Kingdoms – Shared Identities.

Tracks: The Railroad in Photographs from the George Eastman House Collection makes its way to the Figge Art Museum, Davenport, on January 15th, 2011. Organized by the George Eastman House, Tracks covers 160 years of railroad history in photography. Both the railway and photography developed concurrently at the beginning of the 19th century and shared similar impressions on people’s view of previously unseen landscapes. These inventions permitted, for the first time, a person’s ability to be transported, both visually and physically, to worlds they had only previously imagined. Both forever changed the way the world was perceived.

This Sunday January 30th, the Figge Art Museum and the University of Iowa will be hosting a public reception celebrating three new exhibitions at the museum – Tracks: The Railroad in Photographs from the George Eastman House Collection; Crossing the Mississippi: The Quad Cities, the Railroad and Art; and Those Who Can: The University of Iowa School of Art & Art History Studio Faculty Exhibition.

The Figge Art Museum would like to announce that its executive director since 2007, Sean O’Harrow Ph.D., will become the next director of the University of Iowa Museum of Art. Dr O’Harrow will take up his duties in November.

Lillian L. Brand of Davenport never married and never had children. But a scholarship program she started -- named for a nephew who died young -- has helped 44 teen art students pursue their dreams.

Figge outreach program is awarded grant from the NEA

The Figge Art Museum received announcement this week that its arts education initiative, The Big Picture, has been awarded a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. “Receiving NEA support is a huge victory for the Figge, as well as for the Quad Cities Area. This grant confirms that the Figge’s arts-integration initiatives can compete at the national level and it shows that Washington recognizes the Quad Cities as a community that values keeping art in its schools.” – Melissa Hueting, outreach coordinator

On Thursday, May 20th the Figge was awarded a $25,000 grant from the Riverboat Development Authority (RDA). The grant will help fund the upcoming exhibition, Dancing Towards Death (September 18, 2010 – February 02, 2011). The RDA was a leading contributor to the Figge Art Museum capital campaign and has sponsored a number of exhibitions, including Paper Trail: A Decade of Acquisition from the Walker Art Center and John Bloom: Visions of Iowa.

The Figge Art Museum is one of more than 600 museums to offer free admission
to military personnel and their families this summer

Davenport, Iowa -—Today The Figge Art Museum announced the launch of Blue Star Museums, a partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, Blue Star Families, and more than 600 museums across America to offer free admission to all active duty military personnel and their families from Memorial Day through Labor Day 2010. Families can visit the Figge Art Museum at www.figgeartmuseum.org for museum hours. The complete list of participating Blue Star Museums is available at www.arts.gov.