On View August 26, 2025 - January 25, 2026

Black and white etching of a man with a thin mustache and goatee, shown from the shoulders up. He wears a white shirt and black tie, set against a dark background with visible linear etching.

The University of Iowa (then the State University of Iowa) solidified its reputation as a leading arts school when it opened the doors to a classically designed but modernized arts building on the west campus in 1936. Under the direction of Lester D. Longman (1905–1987), the Department of Art was restructured and, in 1938, added BFA, MFA, and PhD degrees. The overhaul combined studio and art-historical instruction, a curriculum turn known as the “Iowa Idea” that was conceived “to correct the national situation of art schools preparing good artists but poor historians.” 

Iowa’s pedagogical model positioned art as central to the development of an American citizenry. The department attracted emerging talents who would become some of the most influential artists and teachers of the twentieth century. Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012), who had been denied undergraduate admission to the Carnegie Institute of Technology because of her race, enrolled in Iowa’s first MFA class in 1938. Over the course of the next decade, the university continued to raise its profile through nationally acclaimed summer exhibitions and far-sighted art acquisitions. On view in this gallery are works by just a fraction of the extraordinary faculty members and students who contributed to this efflorescence.

Caption: Houston E. Chandler (American, 1914–2015), Self-Portrait, 1946. Etching on paper. Collection of the School of Art, Art History and Design.