Iowa 3: What I Did On My Summer Vacation

I learned something new about hotels. Apparently, these days, you need to inform the Front Desk if you expect housekeeping to tidy your room. Who knew? I definitely didn’t get the memo.

Doing This And That

Anticipating those covered bridges, I reconsidered living without a camera. I’ve felt the mobile was good enough—I brought adequate snaps back from Lisbon, Portugal, in January. But I miss a real camera with real capabilities. Christian Photo was not far, just out in Urbandale. Acquired a nifty little Canon, two lenses, and the usual accoutrements. Already I have managed to lose a lens cap and so have already made a return trip.

Having completed my obligations at the Winterset Library and Beaverdale Books, it’s me-time. And that means a day at the Des Moines Art Center and then an early evening. My flight departs at 5:10 am. I’m a bit anxious, with no phone on which to set an alarm. The Front Desk promise a wake-up call at 3:45 am, though. (Spoiler alert. Wake-up call never happened. Good thing I’d been awake for fifteen minutes already.)

DMAC

It has been ten years since I was last in Des Moines. My first stop was the Mary and John Pappajohn Sculpture Park downtown. The main museum is a ways up Grand Avenue. James D. Edmundson, whose 1933 legacy funded the original building, insisted that it be built some distance from downtown in order to protect the art from urban pollution. True forethought.

The sculpture park sits right in the middle of town, cheek-by-jowl with the Central Library, near a number of excellent eateries, and just over the Des Moines River from the enormous, ornate, 19^th century heap that is the Iowa State House.

The museum is not much different on the outside than it was the first time I saw it in 1986. A little worse for wear, perhaps. The stone of the Art Deco entrance needs repointing. The grounds could use a little TLC. But times are hard. Ted at the front desk would have fit in with the old gang. And, in fact, our respective employments nearly overlapped. We had a good jaw and shared our mutual dislike of a former assistant director. Now that was fun.

The Art

Ah, the art. The Eliel Saarinen Building (1948) still offers the classics. The “old” painters (Goya, John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, Henry Ossawa Tanner (both pictures were there) occupied the central and largest of the front galleries. They shared space with the French Realist and Impressionist paintings: Gustave Courbet, Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro. Just lovely.

I strolled past some early moderns, including a Braque, a Gris, and an Archipenko bronze, and entered the sculpture court designed by I.M. Pei (1968). More old friends there, especially Deborah Butterfields’ lovely horse, “Hoover.”  Also much that was unfamiliar to me.

I took the enormous elevator in the Richard Meier wing (1985) to the top level. We used to joke about using reserving that elevator for Education Department breakfast meetings.

To my absolute delight, my most favorite work in the collection had finally been given the space and the light it deserves. Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s The Amazing Juggler (1952). Be still my beating heart!

Richard Diebenkorn’s sunny Ocean Park was back on the main level where, in my opinion, it belongs. Ten years ago it was down in the dark precincts of the lower level, flanked by works that cast a dreary light.

After A Break

Then I needed lunch. The café has changed only in terms of managing the kitchen. The inside and outside seating was largely the same. A falafel pita and fresh fruit cup was just the thing.

The large temporary exhibition was interesting—Topographies: Mapping Being and Belonging—was interesting but my eyes couldn’t handle either the reduced light or the fact that most of it seemed installed much further away than I could see. Shoulda brought in the glasses I use for driving.

Visited the Gift Shop and the display of postcards reminded me of old loves relegated to storage: Gabriele Münter, Stanton MacDonald-Wright, Morris Louis, Claes Oldenburg. Ah well. Next time.

The Take-Away

The days had been wonderful and I had chalked up the run of restless nights to the absence of Ping from my bed and anxiety provoked by the absence of my cell phone. Overall, a good trip.

By the time I had retrieved Ping from doggy sleep-away camp, I was just about beat. Soon I was coughing crud; phlegm was occluding my sinuses and at least the right eustachian tube, and reducing my hearing to negligible. Yeah. Those four flights had, each of them, been jammed full.

Souvenirs of summer vacation, I guess, must come in all forms.