Stanley Museum of Art Digital Collection

The University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art’s permanent collection encompasses over sixteen thousand artworks from around the world. These support and enhance university research, teaching, and outreach, and enrich the lives of all Iowans. We invite you to learn more about the collection through the Iowa Digital Library.

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Paintings

The museum’s collection is particular strong in twentieth-century paintings by modern masters such as Jackson Pollock, Elizabeth Catlett, Max Beckman, Marsden Hartley, Alma Thomas, Sam Gilliam, and Joan Mitchell, among many others.

Regionalism

The economic and environmental catastrophes of the 1930s inspired some American artists to leave city life behind and return to their rural home states, where they depicted daily life. Key strengths in the Stanley’s collection include works by Grant Wood, Marvin Cone, and other figurative artists who followed their lead.

Ceramics

The museum’s ceramic collection spans millennia and the globe. Highlights include ancient terra-cotta figures from both the Near East and West Africa’s Niger Delta; Zulu- and Bamana-style vessels; Chinese, Japanese, and Korean vessels created between the Neolithic period and the late twentieth century; and works by modern and contemporary ceramic artists.

Drawings

The Stanley holds drawings that range chronologically from works by European old masters like Guercino, Claude Lorrain, and Charles Le Brun to those by modern artists including Odilon Redon, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Philip Guston. The museum is also home to a collection of Plains Indians ledger art.

Prints

The Stanley’s deep and diverse collection of prints includes old master woodcuts and engravings, etchings by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, Japanese woodblock prints that span the seventeenth to twentieth centuries, and modern and contemporary prints that demonstrate a wide array of media and techniques.

Photography

The museum’s photography collection spans the history of the medium from nineteenth-century contact prints to contemporary digital prints, with particular strength in work by twentieth-century modernist and street photographers including Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, Nathan Lerner, Carlotta Corpron, and Barbara Morgan.

African Art

The core of the museum’s African collection is the Stanley Collection of African Art, which consists primarily of nineteenth- and twentieth-century wooden objects from West and Central Africa. Other strengths include African textiles, arts of personal adornment, pottery, and contemporary art by Taiye Idahor, Abdoulaye Konaté, and others.

Oceanic Art

The museum’s modestly scaled collection of Oceanic Art includes nineteenth- and twentieth-century wooden and fiber objects from Melanesia, examples of Samoan tapa cloth, malangan-style figures, an Asmat-style mask ensemble from the Brian and Yvonne McCabe Collection, and a Baining-style leaf-spirit mask from the Rosemary and John Olds Collection.

Indigenous Art of the Americas

The museum’s holdings of indigenous American art are both culturally and geographically diverse, including ancient Andean textiles, ceramic objects from West Mexico, finely beaded objects from North America, mid-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Plains Indians ledger art, and Puebloan-style pottery, among other objects.

Asian Art

The museum’s Asian art spans more than three thousand years and includes objects in diverse media from China, Japan, Korea, Tibet, Turkey, and Iran. Highlights include jade and ivory from China, ancient terra-cotta figurines from Iran, paintings by Huang Xiangjian and Kuniyoshi Utagawa, and woodblock prints from Edo- and Meiji-era Japan.

Textiles

The museum’s textile collection encompasses both functional and fine art objects ranging from ancient Andean textiles to Dada assemblages by Lil Picard. Other highlights include twentieth-century, handwoven and dyed cloth from West Africa, finely beaded objects from Native North America, hats from Africa and Peru, Turkish flatweaves, and Gee’s Bend–style quilts.