faculty, staff, students, and alumni involved in deciding what goes where
Iowa State University's collection of art was built by the people who live and work on this campus. Public art has been part of how this university tells its own story. Over 100 commissioning committees have brought national artists to campus.
The collection isn't just for walking past on the way to class; it's often part of class. Public works of art on view all throughout campus are used for training in close observation and interpretation—skills that transfer to reading data, analyzing designs, diagnosing patients, or understanding any visual information. University Museums staff lead tours for classes across all eight ISU colleges: engineering students learning lost-wax casting techniques, forestry students examining wood in sculpture, animal science students analyzing changes in the industry through historic prints.
The growing collection reflects the mission of a department, college, or the university itself. And all of them need maintenance—cleaning, conservation, new bases when Iowa weather takes its toll. University Museums takes care of what Iowa built.
Memorial Union Parking Ramp, 2229 Lincoln Way (mapped location)
East Campus Parking Deck, 500 Wallace Road (mapped location)
History of the Art on Campus Collection and Program
The first public works of art on campus were two bas-relief murals in the 1920s by Nellie Verne Walker (1873-1973), a female sculptor from Iowa, on the east exterior of the original Library building. The traditional public art program began during the Great Depression when Iowa State College’s then President, Raymond M. Hughes (1927-1936), envisioned that "the arts would enrich and provide substantial intellectual exploration into our college curricula." Portraits of distinguished faculty, notable alumni, presidents and administration were actively commissioned during this time, a tradition that continues today. Hughes invited Iowa artist Grant Wood (1891-1942) to create agricultural murals in the Library that address the founding of Iowa as well as Iowa State Agricultural College and Model Farm. He also offered Christian Petersen (Danish-American, 1885-1961) a sculptor residency for one semester to design and build the Dairy Industry Building’s courtyard fountain and bas-relief. Petersen’s tenure ended up lasting twenty-one years, resulting in twelve major campus sculptures and over 200 sculptural studio works of art. He created a legacy using figurative traditions in a narrative style to depict campus qualities. In the spirit of Christian Petersen, Iowa State University continues to tell the stories of contemporary campus life and academics with public art, building a collection that became the Art on Campus Collection and Program.
Iowa became one of the first states to enact a percent-for-art law. The Art in State Buildings legislation, which would ensure the presence of art in all future state buildings, was signed by then Governor Robert Ray in 1979. Since then, Iowa State has completed over 100 Art in State Buildings (AiSB) projects, commissioned or acquired over 700 works of public art, and involved over 1000 faculty, students and staff in the AiSB commissioning process. These public art acquisition committees still follow the policies and procedures developed in the early 1980s: writing the philosophy statements, setting up the process to review public artists, selecting the artists, reviewing and selecting the public works of art and monitoring the budget for the projects. Each committee has control over aspects such as giving preference to a particular expression or style of proposed public works of art—for example, realistic, narrative, or abstract. Most importantly, the committee—not University Museums—has final approval of each artist’s proposed public work of art. The primary responsibility of the museums staff is to ensure that a pool of professional, national public artists is available from which to review, select, commission, and acquire, followed by the University Museums’ the long-term commitment to care, maintenance and integrated educational programs.
Utilizing AiSB and other fiscal support, the Art on Campus Collection accessions an average of 8-10 projects annually.
Today
Iowa State University is home to one of the largest campus public art programs in the United States. Over 2,500 public works of art make up the Art on Campus Collection, and are located across campus in buildings, courtyards, open spaces and classrooms. Iowa State’s public art is not required to be beautiful, but it is required to be intellectually relevant to the contemporary campus and utilized in curricula. The Art on Campus Collection and Program, formalized in 1980, includes acquisition, care and maintenance in addition to scholarship and educational programming.
Other departments' pages about the Art on Campus Collection
