Rising Emotions
For the past few days I have anxiously scanned the headlines trying to learn whether or not the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art and Grant Wood Studio have been affected by the floods. A few years ago, a group of Carter docents and I traveled to Cedar Rapids to visit Grant Wood’s Studio and to see an exhibition that included our Parson Weems’ Fable. Watching the news and seeing the water seep into the streets and destroy the neighborhoods we explored and admired has been truly awful. So while I was relieved to read CRMA Executive Director Terry Pitts’ press release today, I can’t help but worry about everything and everyone else that has been touched by this tragedy. My thoughts are with you.
Comments
The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art is recovering from a near-miss. Flood waters stopped three feet short of our building, but the violence of the quick-moving flood created a powerful backup of the city’s sewage system that overcame our defenses. As a result we had 9 inches of murky stuff in the Museum’s basement, which included collection storage.
Fortunately, staff and volunteers spent two days moving some artworks to higher floors and other artworks to higher areas within art storage. As a result, we seem to have only to have only two conservation issues: 1) a few pieces of sculpture that simply could not be moved had to sit in water for several days, and 2) some art has started rippling from extremely high humidity. As of today (Tuesday) all of the water is out of the building, nearly all of the art has been triaged and moved by a conservation crew, and we have restored electricity to the Museum. But since our air conditioning and dehumidification systems will be down for some time to come, we are getting proper air from a block long line of semi-trailers and generators.
The Grant Wood Studio is several blocks farther from the Cedar River and it is considerably higher than the Museum and was never endangered.
Unfortunately, the National Czech and Slovak Museum appears to have had more than ten feet of water and I understand they were not successful in removing all of their collection in time.
From what I’ve read on various museum listservs it sounds like the museums in Cedar Rapids were able to relocate their collections before the flood, except for the Ice House Museum, which had 4 ft of water and quite a bit of damage to artifacts and the building itself.
— Jana, June 17, 2008, 4:16 p.m.