History, variety on display in library art collection

WASHINGTON — The walls of the Washington Public Library are replete with artwork, from paintings of the community to abstract representations of human ingenuity, to a hallway that rotates through displays of local creators from one month to the next.

The displays are managed by the library’s art committee, a board that not only decides what to put on the walls, but manages curation of new pieces and reframing of donated items.

Carol Ray, a current and founding member of the committee, said many pieces were owned by the library before its move from Main Street. The collection was largely donated by former Washington Evening Journal Publisher David Elder, but couldn’t be displayed in the previous building’s limited space.

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But most of that art ended up in the current library’s basement even after the move, waiting for someone to place it on a wall. Even once it was rediscovered, librarians had little information about the works’ origins.

“People didn’t know what we had for years, because they couldn’t be displayed at the old library,” Ray said. “(Elder) had very good taste, but he didn’t know much about the artists, or the technique, so we ended up having to do a lot of research.”

Some of that research was academic. The rest was largely based on Ray’s recognition of names and signatures attached to the works.

She found that most of the items originated from Southeast Iowa.

“I was a high school art teacher for almost 30 years, and I also taught art history classes, and I’ve always loved art museums and working there,” she said. “Having a chance to be a curator here was kind of a dream come true, so I worked very hard on this.”

Ray remembered the moment she found an etching of pigs in a barnyard in that basement, made by her own college printmaking teacher, Virginia Myers.

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It now resides in the Nicola Stoufer/Washington State Bank meeting room.

“She would go down to the stockyards, which were around back then, and draw the animals,” Ray said. “When I saw it, I had this moment of, ‘Nobody knows this is here, I could take this home!’ … It was the first thing we hung.”

Combining Elder’s contributions with others made over the years, the library now has a stunning variety of mediums, styles and subject matters represented in its art collection, and no artist has more than two pieces represented throughout the galleries.

One is a painting of the city’s downtown, facing south. Another, a stitched tapestry near the children’s section, is among the library’s most valuable pieces. An abstract work upstairs titled “Master of the Elements” depicts a face, seemingly visible only after staring at it for long enough, in the right light.

A photograph of Dave Elder himself captures smoke blowing from the 70-year Journal employee’s pipe. A series of small bookplates in the Helen Wilson Gallery greets patrons at the top of the library’s stairs, representing a now somewhat outdated method of marking a book’s ownership. One self-portrait in compressed charcoal, made by a Mid-Prairie student who later became an art professor, is allegedly haunted.

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On top of the variety, Ray said she took pride in the quality and number of pieces on display.

“A lot of libraries will have, you know, a few paintings, but we have at least 50 unique works,” she said. “Of those, 46 are originals. A few are prints, but they’re very limited prints … I think it makes us very unique, and I think it’s worth coming here just to see the artwork.”

Ray said the collection also represented the values of the library itself, not only an institution of knowledge, but a living record of stories and accomplishments that challenges minds and spurs new ideas.

“To me it’s like a book, it’s just another way of compiling human records,” she said. “Only these are very beautiful and intriguing. My advice to people is, don’t stop looking if you’re bewildered by something. Keep looking at it, and very soon, you will probably have some kind of very personal reaction to it.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com