Right now at London’s Tate Modern, there is a single room in which select works from late University of Iowa alumna Ana Mendieta are displayed on a wall directly opposite the multi-paneled painting, Conservatory (Portrait of Frida Kahlo) (1988), by late University of Iowa alumna Miriam Schapiro. And the Iowa connections don’t end there. Hanging […]
University of Iowa history
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The Iowa Gambling Task: A 1994 decision-making experiment at UI has been revisited countless times since
You’ve heard of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Now meet its strung-out cousin, the Iowa Gambling Task. IGT, also called the Iowa Gambling Task Experiment, is considered the gold standard for measuring cognitive decision-making. Thirty years after its debut, scientists (along with pop-science writers, podcasters and YouTubers) still continue to discuss it. In fact, […]
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‘The best guy in Iowa City’: Byron Burford, mentee of Grant Wood and friend of Kurt Vonnegut, was a (ring)master of many forms
Born and raised in Mississippi, Byron Burford was drawn to the University of Iowa through an interest in one of its professors: Iowa’s Regionalism artist, Grant Wood. The American Gothic painter mentored Burford as an undergraduate, helping him hone his talents and lifelong love of circuses and carnivals into a distinctive oeuvre. Burford earned his […]
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For the sake of science, NASA gave away hundreds of moon rocks. Iowa keeps its allotment under lock and key.
Is this heaven? No, but there are pieces of the heavens in Iowa — and 135 countries, all U.S. states and the United Nations. Specifically, four rice-grain-sized pieces of moon rock from the Apollo 11 mission, the first to land on the Moon. In total, the mission returned to Earth with 47.5 pounds of lunar […]
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‘The American people must have more than a choice between evils’: Iowan Henry A. Wallace, FDR’s vice president, was an ag innovator and fierce antifascist
“The Cornfield Prophet” Henry A . Wallace, known for his pioneering work in agriculture, was a progressive statesman who championed the “Century of the Common Man.” A heartbeat away from the presidency for four years as FDR’s vice president, his supporters viewed him as the torchbearer for the New Deal, while opponents dismissed him as […]
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‘Collections are fragile,’ but conservationists say they’re being ignored as the State Historical Society moves out of Iowa City using prison labor
Behind the Centennial Building in downtown Iowa City on Monday morning, workers began to load a truck with parts of the collections housed in the research facility and archives of the State Historical Society of Iowa (SHSI), the building’s occupant since 1956. SHSI announced on June 17 that it would close the Iowa City facility, […]
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Stanley Museum debuts exhibition of work by Hayward Oubre, a trailblazing UI art student and HBCU instructor
This fall, the University of Iowa will welcome home the work of Hayward Oubre, whose career was as disciplined and deliberate as the artist that shaped it. “Hayward Oubre: Structural Integrity,” on display now through Dec. 7, brings together a collection of sculptures, paintings and prints in the first comprehensive solo exhibition of his work. […]
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Peak Iowa: ‘Meteor excitement’ brought a small fortune to the Amana area in the 1870s
On Friday, Feb. 12, 1875, shortly before 10:30 p.m., “one of the most brilliant meteors of modern times illuminated the entire State of Iowa, and adjacent parts of the States of Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.” “The meteor, in rapidly moving through the atmosphere, produced a great variety of sounds — rolling, rumbling, and detonations […]
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Ron Steele is leaving KWWL after more than 50 years on eastern Iowa airwaves
After more than 50 years on the air, Ron Steele is leaving KWWL. The state’s longest-serving news anchor announced his coming departure at the end of the 10 p.m. news broadcast on Tuesday. “I have come to an agreement with, and have accepted an offer from, KWWL, which will end my career here at KWWL […]
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Peak Iowa: Poet John Berryman’s brief, troubled time in Iowa City
Content warning: Suicide The poet John Berryman’s chance to have a quiet, uneventful life ended early one morning in 1926 when he was 11. It ended when his father walked into the backyard with a gun and committed suicide. John was in his bedroom when it happened. The bedroom’s windows faced the backyard. It wasn’t […]
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Peak Iowa: How two UI scientists bred the first sperm bank
In the mid-1970s, as his retirement from the University of Iowa College of Medicine approached, Dr. Raymond Bunge recalled how some people reacted to the biggest scientific breakthrough of his career. “I received many letters, some of them signed, asserting that I was a scientific monster, un-Christian, and a disgrace to medicine,” Bunge, a physician […]
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Peak Iowa: Ana Mendieta’s aching, unsettling absence
In Árbol de la Vida (1976) Ana Mendieta covered herself in mud and foliage and pressed her body against a tree, blending into it as if becoming part of it. It is simultaneously body art, sculpture and performance. I am stunned by the absolute physicality of her work, the bodily engagement with the land itself: […]
