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Home , Des Moines Art Center, Richard Meier

John and Mary Pappajohn Gallery and Studio Map Welcome to the Des Moines Art Center! Park

Open to visitors since September 2009, the The Des Moines Art Center is a world-class museum in the heart of the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park Midwest. With a focus on contemporary art, it has amassed an important features artwork by 19 of the world’s most collection exhibited in three major buildings, on the grounds, and Photo © Cameron Cam p bell

celebrated artists. The 4.4 acre park, located Photo © Cameron Cam p bell downtown in the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park. We hope you within a major crossroads of the urban grid, The first addition on the south side of the The second addition, on the north, was museum was designed by I. M. Pei and opened designed by Richard Meier and opened enjoy your visit and that you will return soon! creates a pedestrian friendly entranceway in 1968. in 1985. to . This accessible FREE admission Restaurant setting, coupled with the skilled landscape To Pei Building design and caliber of the art, makes it (with the exception of some The Art Center Restaurant, located directly special events) across the Maytag Courtyard, offers a unlike any other sculpture park in the United To Meier Building Meredith Gallery States. The Pappajohns’ contribution of West Gallery lunch menu that is inspired by fresh, local 25 works for the park is the most significant W.T. and Edna Dahl Visitor Guide Museum Hours ingredients and changes weekly. Wine, Gallery Tuesday – Friday: 11 am – 4 pm spirits, and homemade desserts are donation of artwork ever made to the Restaurant Upper Level Thursday: 11 am – 9 pm available. Please see one of the servers to Des Moines Art Center. Jaume Plensa (Spanish, born 1955) Saturday: 10 am – 4 pm be seated; children’s menus are available. The Art Center collection’s overriding (American, 1882–1967) Educational Programs Nomade, 2007 Wells Fargo Automat, 1927 Gallery Sunday: 12 – 4 pm The John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park Painted stainless steel, 324 x 204 x 216 inches Cowles Sculpture Court Maytag principle is a representation of artists of Oil on canvas, 28 1/8 x 36 inches Engaging our visitors with the art of our time Florence Cowles Reflecting Pool Restaurant Hours is a collaborative effort of the Pappajohns, the City of Promised gift from John and Mary Pappajohn Main Level Kruidenier Building Closed Mondays and select holidays the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, each Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; is at the heart of the Art Center’s mission. Des Moines, the Des Moines Art Center, and numerous to the Des Moines Art Center Tuesday – Saturday: 11 am – 2 pm Purchased with funds from the Edmundson Art corporate and private funders. Photography © Cameron Campbell Through a vast array of fun and educational Lower Level Closed Sundays and Mondays through a seminal work. This accounts Foundation, Inc. 1958.2 Museum Shop for an impressive collection that ranges programming such as tours, classes, family To Levitt Auditorium Courtyard GalleryAnna K. Meredith The Museum Shop, located to the north of weekends, lectures, gallery talks, and films, Lower Level Museum Shop Assistance from Edward Hopper’s Automat (above) Preservation the Information Desk, offers gifts, jewelry, the Art Center offers many options to make To Pei Building Art Center security is located throughout to ’ Tennyson, Henri We hope you will help us preserve the A.H. Blank Galleries Lobby cards, books, posters, magnets, home the artwork exhibited more meaningful for the galleries. If you need assistance during Matisse’s Woman in White, Georgia works of art in our care for future generations Gail and décor, and items related to the Permanent all ages. For more information, please Stanley Print Gallery your visit, please see a member of security or O’Keeffe’s From the Lake No. 1, and by observing a few guidelines. Richards Collection, the John and Mary Pappajohn visit www.desmoinesartcenter.org or call Studio 3 staff at the Information Desk, Museum Shop, Mary and John Pappajohn Francis Bacon’s Study after Velásquez’s • Please do not touch the artwork Education Gallery Sculpture Park, and special exhibitions. 515.277.4405 for a full calendar of events. Main Entrance or Restaurant. Entrance Art Center members receive discounts on Portrait of Pope Innocent X. (including sculpture). Many works of art are fragile. To minimize the possibility of an merchandise, excluding consignment items. Tours Studio Margaret Studio accident, please keep back at least one 5 Brennen 1 Learn something new and have fun too. Studio foot, and check any large bags and/or Lower Main Adrienne and Join us! Take a tour of any exhibition, the Art Level Level Charles Herbert Audio Guides umbrellas at the Information Desk. Education Galleries Year-long memberships may be purchased Access Center’s renowned Permanent Collection, Principal A free self-guided audio tour of highlights Studios in the Museum Shop and various shops in The Art Center is wheelchair and stroller • Food and drink (including chewing- or the Pappajohn Sculpture Park. We can . Studio Studio in the Art Center’s Permanent Collection 6 2 the Des Moines metro area. In addition to accessible. There are two accessible gum) are allowed only in the accommodate groups from 2 to 90 people, is available. Please ask for an iPod and Facility Rental shop discounts, benefits of membership entrances: one to the south of the Main Restaurant and Courtyard. Feel free to and it’s a perfect activity for a family, work headphones at the Information Desk. A The Art Center is available for receptions, Studio 7 include free admission to select special Entrance at the Education Entrance, and one leave drinks or to-go boxes from the team, or social group. Please schedule driver’s license or other form of collateral is corporate events, and other special events, discounts on classes, invitations to to the north, in the Richard Meier building Restaurant at the Information Desk as at least three weeks in advance. Contact To Greenwood Park requested during use of the iPods and will occasions. Contact 515.271.0336 or Aerial view of the Pappajohn Sculpture Park. Photography © Cameron Campbell and Andy Goldsworthy’s exhibition openings, and more! Members facing Grand Avenue. Wheelchairs are you tour the galleries. [email protected] or Three Cairns. be returned at the conclusion of your tour. [email protected] for more also have the opportunity to join affiliate available at the Information Desk. Accessible 515.271.0328. • Due to copyright issues, photography information. Pappajohn Sculpture Park N Restrooms The original building, designed by Eliel Saarinen, groups such as Art Noir and Print Club. restrooms are available via the elevators at opened in 1948. is permitted only outside the building. Adult Group Tours: Extend your 12th Street Information Desk and Audio Tours the Education Entrance and in the Richard Ingersoll Avenue 13th Street Locust Street Your membership also helps the Art Center $2 per person/$20 minimum fee Visitor Comments Art Center visit to the Elevator continue its free admission policy and Meier building. • Sketching and note-taking is

Pappajohn Sculpture 15th Street Walnut Street Grand Avenue outreach efforts. encouraged in the galleries, however Groups touring the Art Center and the and Suggestions Park, three miles east Handicap Accessible

MLK Jr. Parkway Mulberry Street There is a comment/guest book at the only with lead pencils, which are Pappajohn Sculpture Park on the same day on Grand Avenue to Drinking Fountain are $3 per person or a minimum fee of $30. Information Desk. You may also e-mail downtown Des Moines. Locust Cherry Street Coat Room available at the Information Desk. entirelyunexpected On the cover Top: Original Eliel Saarinen building main entrance. Center: View of the west side of the Richard Meier building. Student Tours: Free us at [email protected] Bottom: John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park in downtown Des Moines with Mark di Suvero’s T8, 1985, in the foreground or call 515.277.4405. (detail of original photo). Top and bottom photos © Cameron Campbell

Fleur Drive MLK Jr. Parkway 4700 Grand Avenue, Des Moines, 50312-2099 515.277.4405 www.desmoinesartcenter.org Grand Avenue Grand Avenue History and Architecture Sculpture on the Grounds 7 6 5

As noteworthy as the art collection is The experience of the Art Center In addition to the sculpture on the Eliel Saarinen 4 at the Des Moines Art Center, the Eliel Saarinen (American, born actually begins outside the buildings grounds and at the Pappajohn Sculpture 45th Str ee t museum likewise boasts an outstanding 1873 –1950) first achieved international with art that responds to the Park, the Des Moines Art Center sites two collection of architecture. fame in his native Finland and built upon architecture and the landscape. on the in downtown Des Moines by artists Sally Pettus that reputation after moving to the United 1 3 Main Entrance 2 The three architects who have collaborated States in 1923. It is ironic, however, that The Art Center is located within the and Joel Shapiro. They can be found at the in the design of the museum, Eliel Saarinen, two of his most famous American projects 19th-century Greenwood Park and corner of 2nd and Grand Avenues, and on I. M. Pei, and Richard Meier, are among were never built: his acclaimed proposal in view of Grand Avenue, a major city the river side of City Hall at East 1st and N the greatest names in architecture of the for the Chicago Tribune building in 1922 thoroughfare. The location offers a unique Locust Streets, respectively. 20th century. Though each represents a and his award-winning design for the opportunity for site-specific sculpture 9 Follow the sidewalk south very different style and period of modern Smithsonian Art Gallery. It was his design throughout the surrounding grounds. or drive via 45th Street to 8 Greenwood Pond: Double Site, architecture, their combined efforts, for the Smithsonian that first attracted Rose Garden by Mary Miss, located in the starting with Saarinen’s original Lannon serious local attention as the centerpiece of 1 2 3 4 5 south end of the park. stone building, followed in 1968 by Pei’s an exhibition in Des Moines organized by bushhammered concrete addition and the Fine Arts Association in 1939. Five years Meier’s three-part porcelain clad and granite later, as the search for an architect to design addition in 1985, have resulted in a unique the museum began in earnest, Saarinen The original building designed by Eliel Saarinen sits in Greenwood Park overlooking Grand Avenue. The I. M. Pei building from Greenwood Park at dawn. Photo © Cameron Campbell. The Richard Meier building with ’s Animal Pyramid, 1990, in the foreground. 7 architectural achievement. was the only architect to receive serious The Art Center’s origin, however, is consideration for the job. extension for classrooms and studios. I. M. Pei to the museum. Only the dramatic the other a tight circular stair that offers an Richard Meier The design for the Des Moines humble. It can be traced to the Des Moines After several attempts, a final design The U was to encircle a reflecting pool, and In 1966, when the trustees of the Des V-shaped butterfly roof section above the intimate view to the park beyond. Also of As the collection and programs at the addition bears a strong resemblance to its Association of Fine Arts, which operated for the museum was approved by the the classroom/studio wing would frame Moines Art Center decided to build an main floor hints at what lies beyond the note is the butterfly roof section that allows Des Moines Art Center grew in the 1970s immediate predecessor, the High Museum. out of the turn-of-the-century Beaux board of trustees on March 22, 1945, and the parking lot. The interiors offered large addition to exhibit sculpture, they turned original building. natural light to fill the remaining galleries and and early 1980s, it became clear the The sweeping curves, the signature white Arts-style Main Library building on the Eliel Saarinen was commissioned as architect rambling spaces, starting with the spacious to I. M. Pei (American, born China,1917). Pei’s design for the Des Moines Art the dramatically sculpted walls enclosing museum needed more exhibition space, porcelain-coated metal panels on the Bryan Hunt (American, born 1947) Scott Burton (American, 1939–1989) Lewis deSoto (American, born 1954) Bruce Nauman (American, born 1941) banks of the in downtown of the Des Moines Art Center. The accepted foyer and moving into the galleries. Pei had already built an enviable reputation Center addition, like his designs for the the courtyard. To keep the slab walls especially for the very large-scale works exterior, and the central atrium running the Carl Milles (Swedish, 1875–1955) Man and Pegasus, 1949 Double Niche, 1979 Seat/Leg Table, designed 1986, Shadow, 1995 Animal Pyramid, 1990 Des Moines beginning in 1916. A separate design was a distinctly modern building The choice of materials including as an architect and was about to emerge Everson and Johnson museums, drew throughout the Art Center addition from that contemporary artists were producing. height of the pavilion all can be seen in the Bronze, 172 x 130 x 63 inches Bronze fabricated 1987 Anthracite coal Bronze, 144 x 84 x 48 inches museum became possible with a bequest that would hug the ground rather than rift-grain oak on the walls, coved plaster as one of the most important designers of heavily on the severe, geometric concrete becoming monolithic, the concrete surfaces The museum also needed more in-house building. In Des Moines, however, Des Moines Art Center Permanent 57 x 24 x 16 inches German brownstone 25 x 128 feet Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Des Moines Art Center Permanent from James D. Edmundson. At the time of ceilings and wide-plank oak floors enhance Collections; Purchased with funds 28 1/2 x 56 x 56 inches Des Moines Art Center Permanent Commissioned with funds from the National Endowment overwhelm the natural setting of the city’s art museums in the world, designing the forms of his design for the National Center were bushhammered to a very rough finish, storage and a restaurant/meeting room. A Meier used granite cladding for the first from Florence Call Cowles, 1949.151 Collections; Bequest of Myron Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds for the Arts and anonymous donors, 1990.18 his death in 1933, a trust worth more than Greenwood Park. the relatively casual interior design. in Syracuse, New for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, built which establishes a strong affinity with the competition to design a second addition to time to offset the white panels and also and Jacqueline Blank, 2006.28 Collections; Purchased with funds from from the Bohen Foundation, 1995.65 half a million dollars was established with It owed its horizontal profile and flat roof This initial design was so successful York; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of between 1961 and 1967. The Des Moines rough-hewn Lannon stone in Saarinen’s the Des Moines Art Center was held, and set his addition on a granite base that is Norwest Financial, Inc., commemorating its 100th anniversary in 1997, 1998.27 the stipulation that the money be held for to his earlier design for the Smithsonian that it has remained virtually intact since Art at in Ithaca, New York; addition, though much smaller than the original building. Richard Meier (American, born 1934), who complementary to Saarinen’s Lannon stone. 6 7 8 9 ten years in the hope that the assets would and some of its details to buildings he had the museum opened in 1948. The only the East Wing of the Colorado facility, incorporates the same On a lighter side, though Pei has always had just designed the in A pyramidal cap on the pavilion’s central recover from the Depression. They did, and designed for the campus of Cranbrook major change was moving the auditorium in Washington, D.C.; and an addition and fullness of scale, allowing for large interior denied it, it has been observed that the Atlanta, Georgia, was chosen from a group cube is the inverse of the V-shaped butterfly in 1943, leading citizens of Des Moines drew Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, to the Pei addition and the conversion renovation of the Louvre in Paris. spaces for the exhibition of sculpture. Pei’s windows on the south face of the addition of internationally prominent architects. roof section of Pei’s addition. up plans for a modern museum of art. Michigan, where he was president. The of that space into additional exhibition Pei’s proposal for an addition to the plan called for three sculpture exhibition appear to spell out the architect’s name. To meet the museum’s needs for an Lannon stone cladding appears to be a later galleries. The philosophy behind the Art Center was seemingly simple: a wing areas: a large gallery on the main floor I. M. Pei received the Pritzker additional 28,000 square feet without Original architecture text written by Eliot Nusbaum. request from the trustees, who perhaps trustees’ decision to build “the best type built across the open end of Saarinen’s overlooking a two-story gallery on the lower Architecture Prize in 1983. completely eclipsing the Saarinen building, were looking for a consistency in materials of architecture of the period in which the U-shaped building on its south side. level and a small gallery at the west end of Meier’s plan called for dividing his addition between the new museum and the existing museum is built” rather than the typical By choosing this gently sloping site, the main floor. An auditorium was designed into three parts: a restaurant/meeting room stone pylons already in place in the gardens classical temple-style museum, likewise Pei was able to design a dramatic two-story for the space immediately under the main in the courtyard; a small addition with gallery, behind the area where the Art Center would has proven to be so successful that it too gallery with a spectacular south-facing floor gallery. storage, and a service area on the west end Mary Miss (American, born 1944), Greenwood Pond: Double Site, 1989–1996 be built. remained intact when the board set out facade without overwhelming Saarinen’s Among the addition’s more noteworthy of the Saarinen building; and a pavilion for Mixed media: wood, galvanized steel, cement, and granite; 6.5 acres Henry Moore (British, 1898–1986) Richard Serra (American, born 1939) Andy Goldsworthy (British, born 1956) Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Commissioned by the Des Moines Art Center Saarinen’s design called for a U-shaped to choose an architect to design an addition low-lying building. In fact, the Pei addition is architectural details are the two stairways the Permanent Collection and temporary Three Way Piece No. 1: Points, 1964 –1965 Standing Stones, 1989 Three Cairns, 2002 with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, Melva and Martin Bucksbaum, organization of the galleries, foyer, and to the Des Moines Art Center. all but invisible from the front approach connecting the main- and lower-level exhibitions tied by a glassed-in walkway to Cast bronze, 73 x 53 x 99 inches Six granite blocks; dimensions variable Iowa limestone, lead, steel; dimensions variable Carolyn and Matthew Bucksbaum, City of Des Moines, Des Moines Founders Garden Club, Des Moines Art Center Permanent Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds auditorium with a separate wing-like galleries. One is a wide-open walkway, the north end of the original building. Des Moines Art Center Permanent Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunck Architecture, George Milligan Memorial, Judy Milligan, The Nathan Collections; Gift of the Principal Financial Collections; Commissioned in memory from the Edmundson Art Foundation, Inc., the National Endowment for Cummings Foundation, Norwest Banks N.A., , The Andy Warhol Foundation for Group in honor of the Des Moines Art of David S. and Florence C. Kruidenier; the Arts, and the Ellen Pray Maytag Madsen Sculpture Acquisition Fund, the Visual Arts, The , and McAninch Corporation, 1996.20 Center’s 50th Anniversary, 1998.26 Project made possible by the Kruidenier 2002.16.a‑.d. Photo: Woolly Bugger Studios Family Members and In-laws, 1989.5