Des Moines, Iowa, USA

Designing a series of flexible gallery spaces, a visual classroom, terraces, and public gathering areas, BNIM restores the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art which suffered a historic flooding in 2008, and transforms it into a new cultural arts destination on the University of Iowa campus that restores a dedicated art museum presence to the campus community after 14 years.

The new Stanley Museum of Art reunites the University with its renowned collections of African Art, and 20th-century Art, as well as seminal works such as Jackson Pollock’s Mural that previously held temporary residence in art institutions across the world.

The Stanley Museum of Art Renovation project has recently been awarded a 2023 American Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture, Design, and Urban Studies.

Part of the campus network and adjacent to Gibson Square Park, the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art welcomes students, faculty, and visitors through a transparent and daylight-filled lobby and entry plaza.

These spaces provide opportunities for gathering and socializing, events, performances, and classes, allowing artistic expression to extend from within the walls of the Museum to become a central component of the campus experience. 

Rotating displays of work by contemporary artists will be featured in the main lobby throughout the year.

The first of these installations to greet visitors is a mural entitled Surrounding by a Philadelphia-based abstract painter and professor at Temple University, Odili Donald Odita.

Dynamic and kinetic dark, warm brick exterior recalls the academic and cultural brick masonry buildings of Alvar Aalto, Louis Khan, Eero, and Eliel Saarinen.

Through an alternating composition of brick texture and brick finish, the façade is transformed by the daily and seasonal changes in sunlight.

Programmatic requirements called for much of the building to be designed as a solid mass with limited fenestration in gallery, conservation, and storage areas.

In response, the Museum’s rectilinear form is designed to serve as a protective and respectful home for the display, conservation, and storage of the collections.

The design team strategically included a series of interconnected, occupiable voids in the building massing including exterior terraces, light wells, the main lobby, and public circulation spaces to bring the outside in.

This thread of connective spaces establishes access to daylight, enhances transparency and wayfinding, and guides the cadence of the visitor experience.

Envisioned as a library and laboratory for the Arts, the Stanley Museum of Art provides a series of welcoming gallery spaces where individuals can learn about, discuss, and explore the collections.

Galleries are designed with flexibility to enable the Museum to tailor the size of each space to suit the needs of the collections as well as traveling exhibitions. 

The proportions of the galleries also allow for faculty to curate collections for teaching and research and for students to learn the principles of curating, an initiative central to the Stanley Museum of Art’s mission.

The Stanley Museum of Art features a visual arts laboratory classroom where works of art are installed for students’ coursework observation.

A visible storage room, teaching studios, offices, and collaborative staff and volunteer spaces are also dedicated to the research, support, and teaching of the collections. 

Project: University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art 
Architects: BNIM
General Contractor: Russell Construction Company
Client: University of Iowa
Photographers: Nick Merrick, Michael Robinson, and Spirit of Space