Opening March 1, 2024, this exhibition will feature Twelve Prints by Contemporary American Artists, a portfolio recently gifted to the Stanley by collectors Alan and Ann January.

In 1919, the Weyhe Gallery announced its arrival on the New York art scene. Erhard Weyhe (1882–1972), a German book dealer who emigrated from London to the United States after the outbreak of World War I, founded the gallery. He hired the print scholar Carl Zigrosser (1891–1975) to oversee the publication of a portfolio that would promote the new venture by highlighting twelve acclaimed artists.

Unlike many portfolios of the day, this one was not thematically conceived and showcased a range of techniques: etching, drypoint, woodcut, and lithography, which was still catching on among modern artists. Zigrosser valued the medium as much for its accessibility as its malleability. Prints, he argued, could respond to modernity in ways that rivaled photography. A Year in Print will illuminate the ways this 1919 portfolio reflected socio-political issues of its day and prefigured the artistic innovations of the decades to follow.

A Year in Print is generously supported by Alan and Ann January, The Members Special Exhibition Fund, and The Leola N. Bergmann Print Fund.

The University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art’s permanent collection encompasses over sixteen thousand artworks. Our inaugural exhibition, Homecoming, reintroduces our extraordinary collection to the public.

Homecoming comprises a series of related installations. “Generations," curated by Diana Tuite, Visiting Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, foregrounds the University of Iowa’s history of innovative arts education and scholarship. "Fragments of the Canon: African Art from the Saunders and Stanley Collections," curated by Cory Gundlach, Curator of African Art, features African art collected by a Black Iowan, Meredith Saunders. “History Is Always Now,” also curated by Gundlach, displays the Stanley’s celebrated collection of African art in a way that emphasizes movement and cultural exchange through time and across space. Smaller, more focused installations, curated by Gundlach, include "Centering on Cloth: The Art of African Textiles," which highlights the global scope of interactions that surround the creation, use, and circulation of cloth in Africa, and "About Face: African Masks in Iowa," which emphasizes the historical and artistic relationships between West and Central African masks from the world-renowned Stanley Collection of African Art.

Developed collaboratively by curators, educators, and faculty under the museum director’s guidance, Homecoming illustrates the importance of our world-class collection and allows us to envision new futures in art.

In order to protect sensitive works of art from extended exposure to light, many of the works on display in Homecoming will rotate every six months--meaning that there will always be something new to see during the inaugural exhibition's three-year run.

Visit the links below to learn more about the curatorial choices and themes behind each installation, and to browse images that document the exhibition's rotations.

Generations

Fragments of the Canon: African Art from the Saunders and Stanley Collections

History Is Always Now

Centering on Cloth: The Art of African Textiles

About Face: African Masks in Iowa