It is all around – from the floors of Maple Hall to the roof of Molecular Biology, from the open spaces on Central Campus to the sheltered alcove beneath the stairs of Catt Hall.

It takes numerous forms – from mosaics to paintings to major sculpture.

The Art on Campus collection is so omnipresent and so diverse one might think it’s a normal part of university life and all schools are equally covered in art.

But that’s not so.

Thanks to a long-standing public art tradition – and to a more recent law that requires art in new state buildings – Iowa State has one of the largest collections of campus art in the nation, the University Museums staff said.

“It’s safe to say we’re a leading program for public art in the college or university setting,” said Matt DeLay, curator of University Museums. “Other places are looking to what’s happened here as a model.”

“I’m not sure I’m willing to say we have the largest, but I’m pretty sure we have one of the largest [collections in the nation],” said Lynette Pohlman, director of University Museums.

Iowa State has “over 400 major works of art,” Pohlman said, in addition to many more that are two-dimensional and others that are “not what I would call significant.”

In addition to the breadth of the collection, Pohlman said she is particularly proud the university’s art is “so integrated” with its academics.

“Almost every day on campus, there is at least one class that has an Art on Campus tour,” she said.

And those aren’t just art classes, Pohlman said.

“Name your program,” she said, and chances are it uses campus art in some way.

The artworks are often used to study history, Pohlman said, because they reflect the contemporary issues of their day.

As those issues change, so must the art, she said.

“The campus has art works like it has textbooks,” Pohlman said. “Everyone agrees that it’s important to grow a library and the same is true of a public art collection; it’s important that we don’t stop collecting.”

Gathering materials

Iowa State began collecting art in 1919, Pohlman said, when the college’s first art commission started buying paintings for classroom from traveling salesmen.

But Iowa State lacked true public art – art commissioned for a public space – until the Great Depression, she said.

“It all started with an inspired president,” Pohlman said.

Raymond Hughes, Iowa State’s president from 1927-36, was a chemist who “believed that . to really be a world-class institution, it had to be more than just engineers and ag people,” she said.

At the height of the Depression Hughes purchased artworks for campus and invited Christian Petersen to be the nation’s first college or university sculptor-in-residence, she said.

Iowa State’s first public artwork, Pohlman said, was Petersen’s “History of Dairying” mural series, commissioned in 1934 for what is now the Food Sciences Courtyard.

Hughes also commissioned Grant Wood’s largest murals for the library, DeLay said.

Wood, the world-famous painter of “American Gothic,” developed a style which became one of America’s first distinctive movements, DeLay said.

“He made a really American and Midwestern voice,” he said. “That Iowa State College had the foresight to commission him to do these murals at the height of his career is amazing.”

Putting it all together

That foresight continues today, as Iowa State seeks out significant works by recognized national and international artists as well as Iowa artists, Pohlman said.

There are 18 art projects currently in the works for Iowa State, Pohlman said, including art projects for the Gerdin Business Building, the new Union Drive residence hall, the new Honors Building, the Roy J. Carver Co-Laboratory, and Student Services.

The next of these to be on display is a sculpture that will be installed in front of Student Services early this summer, Pohlman said.

The piece is a 17-foot tall stainless steel sculpture of a column supporting a cyclone shape, said Suzanne Zilber, staff psychologist at Student Counseling Service and AiSB committee member for the project.

The sculpture will “represent Iowa State trying to support students in the growth process,” Zilber said.

We wanted an outdoor piece of artwork that would become a landmark for students, she said.

“We want them to say we’re the building with this in front of it.”

The sculpture, like many other artworks on campus, is a direct result of the 1979 Art in State Buildings – or AiSB – legislation, Pohlman said.

Iowa Code 304A, section 10, states “one-half of one percent of the total estimated cost” of state building and construction projects must be used for “fine arts elements” for the building.

Thus, with each new building or renovation, funding for public art is both mandatory and automatic, Pohlman said.

For each such project, she contacts the academic unit and forms an art committee of “whoever they want, plus art people,” she said.

And “students sit on those committees…they’re involved in the process,” DeLay said.

Each committee must write a public art philosophy statement because the art “should embody the beliefs and the issues of the department or the college that’s doing the commissioning,” Pohlman said. “It should say something about who they are.”

While there are no university-wide rules on the content, she said, Iowa State has certain artistic traditions that often guide committees in their selection of artworks.

Those traditions, many based in the work of Christian Petersen, include the use of the human figure and poetry in the art, Pohlman said.

After the committee members decide what they are looking for, they must determine the process by which they will select an artist, select the artist, approve the artist’s proposal and monitor the budget, she said.

Usually, this process produces more than one artwork, Pohlman said.

For example, she said, Molecular Biology’s “G-Nome Project” is one title for 38 individual works of art.

The 47 AiSB projects at Iowa State have produced 265 public works of art since 1982, Pohlman said.

The AiSB program isn’t the only way campus art is financed, she said. Some pieces are gifts, Some pieces are commissioned using monetary donations. Some pieces are paid by independent fundraising.

And one piece of art was just abandoned on campus.

The large blue sculpture in front of the College of Design “is not an official part of the public art,” said Mark Engelbrecht, dean of the college of Design.

The piece was created by a student “at least 20 years ago,” he said.

But it was supposed to have been a temporary installation.

The sculpture “was to have come down a month after it went up, but somehow it remains there,” Engelbrecht said. “I don’t know whether it’s there because we’re indifferent or because we love it or what.”

Framing

Ultimately, no matter what the piece is or how it was acquired, the role of a university’s art is “fundamentally to educate and to inspire its students,” Pohlman said.

Therefore, Hughes’ decision to make art a part of Iowa State was “an educational decision as well as an aesthetic decision,” she said.

In fact, many of the donors to the Art on Campus collection have been engineers who bought into that philosophy of President Hughes, Pohlman said. “For them to succeed in life, they needed the wisdom that the arts and humanities brought them.”

The Art on Campus collection provides that “necessary connection” between the arts and the sciences, Engelbrecht said.

“It’s good to remind all of the scientists that there is another way to think about the world,” he said. “Of course, the artists are reminded of the scientists every day.”