Des Moines is home to many world-class museums and historical venues. Throughout the year, you can learn about a wide variety of topics through special exhibitions and displays. This guide will help you find all the exhibits currently on display this fall at museums across the Des Moines metro.
Anderson Gallery at Drake University
Harmon Fine Arts Center • 2505 Carpenter Avenue • Des Moines, Iowa 50311 • (515) 271-1994
A Library for Babel • October 21 – November 16, 2016
Spector’s Anderson Gallery installation, A Library for Babel, is an installation of 2,200 stacked library books. Like the Biblical tower it is named after, this work confronts the infrastructural paradox of the differences between private and public language, between thought and text, and between the surface of a structure and the depth of its meaning.
Hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 12:00 Noon to 4:00 pm and late on Thursdays until 8:00 pm
Cost: FREE
Des Moines Art Center
4700 Grand Avenue • Des Moines, Iowa 50312 • (515) 277-4405
Vivian Maier: Through a Critical Lens • September 17, 2016 – January 22, 2017
This exhibition features 70 photographs of people encountered on the streets of New York City and Chicago by the late photographer Vivian Maier. Maier’s photographs, created between the late 1940s and the early 1980s, were kept completely private by the artist and caused a stir when they were first exhibited at the Chicago Cultural Center in 2011. Elusive, solitary, and clearly talented, Vivian Maier is the quintessential “undiscovered” artist of our time.
When the Dog Bites, When the Bee Stings • October 7, 2016 – January 8, 2017
Amy N. Worthen, the Art Center’s Curator of Prints and Drawings, has selected a few of her favorite things for her last exhibition before retirement. This exhibition is highly personal and features rare works by old and modern masters that she helped to acquire and wrote about for the Art Center.
Single-Channel6: Collected • August 12 – November 3, 2016
Single-channel is a program dedicated to the exhibition and interpretation of important single-channel video by contemporary artists. Each year-long series is dedicated to a specific theme explored in unexpected and surprising ways by artists from around the world. For 2016, the Art Center is celebrating their growing collection of video works by displaying unseen or long off-view art accessioned by the museum in recent years.
Whose Streets? • August 19, 2016 – January 15, 2017
One of the most common subjects depicted in Western painting in the late 19th- to mid-20th centuries was the city. The representation of the city is even more intrinsic to photography, invented as it was in 1839 at the dawn of Modernism. Featuring works from the Art Center’s permanent collections, this exhibition will explore the ways that painting and photography not only captured the novelty of Modernism but also addressed the politics of class, race, and gender as it was played out on the city streets.
Hours: Monday: Closed; Tuesday: 11:00 am to 4:00 pm; Wednesday: 11:00 am to 4:00 pm; Thursday: 11:00 am to 9:00 pm; Friday: 11:00 am to 4:00 pm; Saturday: 10:00 am to 4:00 pm; Sunday: 12 Noon to 4:00 pm
Cost: FREE
State Historical Museum of Iowa
Auditorium • 600 E Locust Street • Des Moines, IA 50319 • (515) 281-5111
Hollywood Backstories: Remembering Jean Seberg • October 22, 2016
Sixty years ago, the Hollywood director Otto Preminger plucked 17-year-old Jean Seberg from her ordinary life in Marshalltown, cast her in the movie “Saint Joan,” and made her an international star. Learn about her remarkable life (1938-1979) during a free screening of the documentary “Movie Star: The Secret Lives of Jean Seberg” at 1:00 pm October 22, 2016 at the State Historical Museum, followed by a Q&A with the documentary filmmakers, a Marshalltown supporter, and Seberg’s sister, Mary Ann.
National History Day Lab • October 29, 2016
Get a jump start on your National History Day project and register for a History Lab this fall. History Labs are research open houses for students, teachers and parents to discover primary and secondary resources, special collections and to network with local librarians and historians. Each History Lab will start with an introduction to the library’s collection and provide a flexible time frame for attendees to explore. You are welcome to bring topic ideas and research materials to begin working on your project analysis.
Art at the Café • November 4, 2016 – January 2017
View “New Works” by Karla Conrad from November 2016 to January 2017 at Café Barattas in the State Historical Building. Art at the Café is a partnership between the Iowa Arts Council, the State Historical Museum of Iowa and Café Barattas.
Hours: Monday through Saturday: 9:00 am to 4:30 pm; Sunday: 12:00 Noon to 4:30 pm.
Cost: FREE
Salisbury House
4025 Tonawanda Drive • Des Moines, IA 50312 • (515) 274-1777
Bridgework • October 12 – November 20, 2016
Bridgework is on display in The Garage at the Salisbury House. This exhibit is in partnership with Des Moines’ artist-centric nonprofit organization, Chicken Tractor, the Plum Blossom Initiative in Wisconsin, and Darger HQ in Nebraska, and will create the first Midwest Regional set of professional development exhibitions. The exhibit features three emerging Iowa artists including Heidi Wiren Bartlett, Tatiana Klusak, and Candida Pagan.
Hours: Monday: Closed, Tuesday through Saturday 10:00 am to 5:00 pm; Sunday 12:00 Noon to 5:00 pm
Cost: $8 Adults; $7 Seniors (age 65+); $2 Youth (age 6-12); Free – Members & children age 5 and under with a paying adult
Science Center of Iowa
401 W Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway • Des Moines, IA 50309 • (515) 274-6868
Wild Music: Sounds & Songs of Life • October 1, 2016 – May 29, 2017
Whales compose, bullfrogs chorus, songbirds greet the dawn and people everywhere sing and dance. What do we all have in common? Long before the advent of Spotify or Pandora, the musical instinct ran deep. Through sensory-stimulating activities, you’ll not only hear the music that surrounds you every day, but you’ll see and even feel it, too. Wild Music is designed to be accessible to all visitors. All of the exhibit’s videos are narrated and captioned, and more than a dozen major components have audio descriptions for vision-impaired visitors.
Hours: Monday CLOSED; Tuesday through Saturday 10:00 am to 5:00 pm; Sunday 12:00 Noon to 5:00 pm
Cost: Adult (13-64) $12.00; Child (2-12) and Senior (65+) $8.00
What exhibit are you most excited to see this fall? Tell us in the comments below!
