Groundbreaking set for $50 million UI Stanley Museum of Art
News release
4/27/19
The University of Iowa will host a ceremonial groundbreaking for a new UI Stanley Museum of Art at 3 p.m. June 7 in Gibson Square Park.
The Stanley Museum of Art will be the final structure to be rebuilt on the UI campus in the aftermath of the 2008 flood. The $50 million, 63,000-square-foot art museum will be located adjacent to the UI’s Main Library and next to Gibson Square Park.
The project will be bid in June, with actual construction estimated to begin in the fall and a public opening estimated to be in 2022. Once complete, the museum will host exhibitions from the museum’s collection as well as traveling exhibits, and provide space for study, research, and storage of artwork.
The former Stanley Museum of Art building was completed in 1969, although the art collection predates the museum by several decades. Its holdings, considered by many to be one of the top university collections in the United States, comprise more than 15,000 works of art, including some of the world’s most important pieces, such as Max Beckmann’s triptych Karneval, Robert Motherwell’s Elegy to the Spanish Republic, no. 126, and the UI’s most famous painting, Jackson Pollock’s Mural.