 – Most people when travelling via the highways and byways come across an ‘I didn’t know’ and discover those hidden treasures unbeknownst to them nestled off the…){kind=link}
MUSCATINE, IA (PNAN) – Most people when travelling via the highways and byways come across an ‘I didn’t know’ and discover those hidden treasures unbeknownst to them nestled off the beaten paths in the good ole USA.
This American treasure became the Muscatine Art Center in 1965 when heirs, Mary Catherine McWhirter and Mary Musser Gilmore, donated the Laura Musser mansion to the City of Muscatine, which led to a fulfillment of the art center’s mission: “to collect, preserve, interpret and exhibit objects of historical and aesthetic importance for the benefit of present and future generations.”
The Center is many things to the community of Muscatine: Historic House Museum, Art Gallery and Local History Museum. The people of Muscatine have made 1314 Mulberry Avenue a gathering place for celebrating the area’s history, art and culture.
The Muscatine Art Center sits on several acres of grounds. One highlight is the 1929 Japanese Garden installed by Laura Musser. The garden occupies approximately ½-acre on the southeast side of the house and features ponds, streams, hills, stones, tress, and paths. Ornamental yews, stone pagodas, shrines, and statuary are original features.
Once the private home of a lumber heiress, the Laura Musser Museum features many distinctive architectural details of the Edwardian period. Built in 1908, this colonial revival mansion has 11 rooms that exhibit important collections of paintings, sculpture, Oriental carpets, and decorative arts. The adjoining Stanley Gallery hosts national, traveling art exhibitions. The Musser Mansion not only became a city treasure, but also a ‘monument’ to showcase the Arts in the community’s region.
Displayed in the period rooms are several collections. The first, the Laura Musser Collection, includes some important pieces of art. George Grey Barnard, who spent a portion of his adolescence in Muscatine and became a prominent sculpture and collector, created a bust of Laura Musser as a child. Her bust provided Barnard funding to study art in Paris. A second work of art, her portrait painted by Thomas Riss received the gold medal at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.
The second collection is the Mississippi River Collection which includes portraits of local steamboat captains, a bird’s eye views of Iowa river towns and scenic paintings by Frederick Oakes Sylvester, Henry Lewis and Joachim Ferdinand Richardt, including a rare work by John Mix Stanley. All of these artists have Iowa stories and spent periods of time studying and recording the Mississippi River. The collection spans the entire length of the river and includes paintings, prints, maps, artifacts, sculpture and ephemera.
The third collection includes 39 works by artists such as Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir, Marc Chagall, Vincent van Gogh, Camille Pissarro, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse that was gifted by Musser’s heirs.
In addition there are works by American Regionalists such as, Grant Wood, Marvin Cone, and others associated with the Stone City Colony are actively acquired as are works made by artists associated with the University of Iowa such as, Mauricio Lasansky and Virginia Meyers.
Two floors of the Stanley Gallery hosts changing exhibitions that rotate multiple times during the year, and lower level designated for studio instruction space.
For more information on his city’s crown jewel and programming, call 563.263.8282 or follow this link: https://www.muscatineartcenter.org/programs.