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Director’s Spotlight: Re-Discovering Iowa's Treasures
By Anita Walker, Director
Sometimes
you simply have to be there. You know what I mean. Watching the 4th of July
fireworks on TV doesn’t hold a candle to the explosion and smell of
blasting powder you experience in person. It doesn’t matter if it’s
hot and humid and buggy. It’s better if you’re there.
I just had the opportunity to “be there” in 18 communities in Iowa traveling with Lt. Governor Sally Pederson on her 4-day Re-Discover Iowa tour across the state. Some of the stops were truly “re-visits,” such as the Western Historic Trails Center in Council Bluffs. But a thousand pictures can’t replicate the experience of being there on a Thursday afternoon when ordinary people like you and me gather at the center with banjos, guitars, fiddles and even spoons to play country music and sing a few familiar songs. They call these gatherings “Jam and Bread,” the jam a reference to the un-rehearsed music, the bread coming in thick slices, warm and slathered with real butter.
On the other side of the state I had a chance to “re-visit” two of our newest cultural attractions: The Figge Art Museum and the River Music Experience. The pair represents the ability of the community to embrace the old and the new. On one corner, an historic red stone building, a former department store, has been recast as a place to experience the rich and unique roots music of the Mississippi River, and as a venue for emerging Iowa bands to show us how they are building on our musical past. Across the street, the gleaming, translucent Figge, home to an encyclopedic collection of art, is attracting sell-out tours of its Italian works interpreted in the context of The Da Vinci Code.
I’ve never been to Gladbrook. Its brand new Matchstick Marvels Museum is worth a drive from anywhere in the state. I can’t adequately describe it. You simply must see it. It contains the painstaking work of Pat Acton who builds monuments and masterpieces out of matchsticks.
And get your hands dirty in Bonaparte. Marilyn Thomas at the Bonaparte Pottery will let you actually be an archaeologist, unearthing pots and pieces of pots lost under the silt and sand of floods, just waiting to be re-discovered.
It is so easy to stay home. CDs and iPODs can deliver perfect music on demand. Great works of art are in your home, a Google away. History is online and on the bookshelf. But it’s just not the same
You really have to be there.
