Muscatine Art Center - Muscatine, Iowa

wyman martin

This is a well preserved mansion with much original furniture!
Not a lot of parking. The parking is parallel parking is on the side street.
Outside there is a "Japanese Garden" with a flowing waterfall and creek.

Janelle Swailes

Have gone to several exhibits now and have been pleasantly amazed. Staff very helpful! Wonderful the local history and new local artists.
Garden outside redone now too!

Pamela Jambeck

We went for the exhibit of clothing made from trash. It was amazing! My daughter is a researcher of plastics in waterways, so found this to be excellent! The museum was wonderful...inside and out!

Julie Mehner

I liked the homey feel of the art center. Marsha really was friendly amd engaging. Will come again

Sarah Heady

The location has made wonderful use of the original house and well-integrated gallery space. I particularly enjoyed to Chagall collection and the children's look and learn gallery--it's a great space to interact with the collection.

Suzette Foster

Amazing! I attended a class of reverse watercolor & everything was furnished for us. The teacher ( Artist Vada Baker ) was kind & gave individual attention to each student. I will definitely sign up for more classes!

Kevin

Went through Lego sculpture exhibit. Good representations of animals and plants built with legos. Exhibit a bit smaller than expected with all of the advertised hype, but worth a viewing.

Will Juntunen

Sunday, March 21st, 2021 at 3:29 PM
Muscatine Art Center
Muscatine, Iowa

I drove northerly out of Davenport Saturday, enjoying the sun as I made my way to LeClaire. Driving in Iowa scares me. Every town deploys speed measuring technology to issue tickets for driving too fast. I hope no tickets show up at the registration address for the car. The tickets can be rather severe. Speeding on the freeway costs a draconian fine of one thousand dollars. Maybe Iowa can't enforce the tickets on an Illinois license? I don't think there's a problem. I used cruise control every time I noticed a speed limit.

I'm in deep Iowa now. The town bears the name of a wine grape, the Muscatine. The town factories once stamped pearl buttons from shells. Oyster shells I think. This house museum shows quilts made in Muscatine over one hundred years ago. The quilts hang with pictures, daguerreotypes even, of the families who enjoyed the comfort of the quilts. This is what people did together, sewing quilts, this far from New York City and Los Angeles.

One of the docents visited with me a moment ago. She kindly reminded me that the museum closes in fifteen minutes. I promised to be out the door in ten so they could close the doors on time. Her family came to Muscatine as an original settler. She might have sewn a quilt with her mother. She has served the museum as a front desk representative for three years. She works at a museum that celebrates her roots. Now, I have to contemplate to understand that kind of connectedness.

A Zen Garden awaits outside. Sculpture around the grounds invites me to wander. I regret not seeing a single piece of summer furniture on the veranda of the Musser Mansion. I could sit on the veranda and write otherwise until kingdom come or the cows come home. I doubt I would see cows. Muscatine is a proper town of parlor homes on the Mississippi River. This might be the perfect place to see dusk falling in three short hours from now.

I'm on the porch of what was the Musser Mansion. I am contemplating the Japanese Garden designed by Laura Musser McColm. I guess her indulgent parents encouraged her in this effort at landscape architecture. She even imported Yews from Japan, yews that still stand among the channels and pools of the garden. I'm guessing Mrs McColm left the house to the city parents, so to speak, so the Van Gogh and the Georgia O'Keefe could be properly exhibited for time to come.

At the top of this Mississippi River bluff, the spring wind roars, the yew trees shake.