The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art is a museum in downtown

Cedar Rapids Cedar Rapids () is the second-largest city in Iowa, United States and is the county seat of Linn County. The city lies on both banks of the Cedar River, north of Iowa City and northeast of Des Moines, the state's capital and largest city. ...

Iowa Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the ...

, United States. The museum is privately owned and was established in 1905. The museum acquired the old Cedar Rapids Public Library building after the library moved into a new location in 1985. The current home of the museum, designed by post-modern architect Charles Moore, was built adjoining the old library in 1989. The mission of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art is to excite, engage, and educate its community and visitors through its collection, exhibitions and programs.View Museum Info
Museumsusa.org (2009-05-20). Retrieved on 2013-09-05.

Collection

The museum has significant collections from several prominent Iowa artists. The museum displays temporary exhibitions of contemporary art and hold the world's largest collection of works by

Grant Wood Grant DeVolson Wood (February 13, 1891 February 12, 1942) was an American painter and representative of Regionalism, best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest. He is particularly well known for '' American Gothic'' (193 ...

Marvin Cone Marvin Dorwart Cone (October 21, 1891 – May 18, 1965) was an American painter in the Regionalism (art), regionalist style.Walch, Timothy (2009)"Cone, Marvin Dorwart" ''The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa''. University of Iowa Press Cone was b ...

, and

Bertha Jaques Bertha Evelyn Jaques (October 24, 1863 – March 30, 1941) was an American etcher and cyanotype photographer. Jaques helped found the Chicago Society of Etchers, an organization that would become internationally significant for promoting etching ...

, works by

Mauricio Lasansky Mauricio Leib Lasansky (October 12, 1914 – April 2, 2012) was an Argentine artist and educator known both for his advanced techniques in intaglio printmaking and for a series of 33 pencil drawings from the 1960s titled "The Nazi Drawings." ...

and the Riley Collection of ancient Roman portrait busts. The

collection includes his paintings “Woman with Plants” and “Young Corn.” In 2002, the CRMA was given the building that houses the original studio of Grant Wood. Located just three blocks from the Museum, the loft studio, known by its fictitious address of 5 Turner Alley, was designed and constructed by Wood, who lived and worked there between 1924 and 1935. It was here that he painted

American Gothic ''American Gothic'' is a 1930 painting by Grant Wood in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wood was inspired to paint what is now known as the ''American Gothic'' House in Eldon, Iowa, along with "the kind of people efancied shoul ...

(1930)—now part of the collection of the

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

—and many of his most famous paintings. The Grant Wood Studio is open to the public for guided tours Saturdays and Sundays. The

collection includes many of his best-known landscapes and abstracts. Cone was a collaborator and friend of Grant Wood. The museum also includes significant pieces by

Malvina Hoffman Malvina Cornell Hoffman (June 15, 1885July 10, 1966) was an American sculptor and author, well known for her life-size bronze sculptures of people. She also worked in plaster and marble. Hoffman created portrait busts of working-class people and ...

, Ann Royer, Carl Van Vechten and many others.

2008 flood

In 2008, the downtown of Cedar Rapids was devastated by the worst flood in the city’s recorded history. The lower storage areas and basements of the Museum were severely damaged by flooding that also threatened the exhibition spaces. The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art had just installed a $200,000 art storage system in its basement six months before the June floods. The Museum’s collection was moved to the higher levels and none of the artwork is known to have been damaged.Flood Recovery Update - Cedar Rapids Museum of Art
Crma.org. Retrieved on 2013-09-05.

References

External links

* {{authority control Art museums established in 1905 Museums in Cedar Rapids, Iowa Art museums and galleries in Iowa Institutions accredited by the American Alliance of Museums 1905 establishments in Iowa