Figge Art Museum

The museum has over 4,000 works of art, ranging from the 16th century to the present, and is best known for its extensive collection of Haitian, Colonial Mexican and Midwestern art, particularly pieces by Thomas Hart Benton, Marvin Cone and Grant Wood, including the only self-portrait Wood ever painted. In 1990, Grant Wood's estate, which included his personal effects and various works of art, became the property of the Figge Art Museum through his sister, Nan Wood Graham, the woman portrayed in American Gothic. The institution also houses a substantial American collection (including works by Albert Bierstadt, James McNeill Whistler, William Merritt Chase, Winslow Homer, Andrew Wyeth, Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Moncho1929 and Jasper Johns), European art (including work by artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Claude Lorrain, Francisco Goya, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Henry Raeburn, Toulouse-Lautrec and Pierre-Auguste Renoir), and works from East Asia (with pieces by Hokusai, Hiroshige and Kunisada). As owners of Grant Wood's estate, the museum is also home to the Grant Wood Archives, and received substantial support from The Henry Luce Foundation for the conservation of these archives. The museum exhibits an important collection of pieces by American architect and designer Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959). The Wright collection includes drawings, furniture, fabrics, and decorative objects from a wide range of projects spanning the architect's career. Projects represented include: Arthur Heurtley House (1902), Avery Coonley House, 1907), Edward P. Irving House (1909), Frederick C. Bogk House (1916), Johnson Wax Headquarters (1936), and the Price Tower (1952). In 1943, the prominent Mexican art historian Manuel Toussaint traveled to Davenport, Iowa to assess the Figge's (then called the Davenport Museum of Art) collection of colonial Mexican art. He called it one of the most important in an American institution at that time and published his thoughts on the collection. == University of Iowa art collection ==

The Figge Art Museum temporarily housed much of the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art collection, after the University of Iowa's gallery was flooded in 2008. With the construction of a new building for the Stanley Museum, the collection was returned to Iowa City starting in 2020. == Western Illinois University graduate program in Museum Studies ==

The Figge Art Museum used to be home to Western Illinois University's graduate program in Museum Studies, which offers a Master of Arts degree in the various aspects of museum management, such as curatorial design, museum administration and finance, art education, collections management, and marketing/PR. == Other information ==

The museum is 115,000 square feet (10,683 m2) and has been accredited by the American Alliance of Museums since 1973. == References ==