Stanley Museum of Art Selected as ICFF 2023 Awards Winner
The University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art was announced as a finalist and winner for the 2023 ICFF Interiors Awards in the Education category. The Interiors Awards and Designer of the Year Award program has held an integral role in the design field, celebrating outstanding interior design work across various industries for over four decades.
The Stanley Museum of Art was envisioned as a facility that would establish a renewed presence and home on the University of Iowa campus while creating new opportunities to embrace the important role of the Museum in benefitting the community through arts education. As described by the Museum’s director, the new facility is a laboratory for teaching, learning, and research as well as a library for global visual culture. Spaces are specifically designed throughout the Museum to support study, research, and discussion of the collections. These spaces include flexible galleries that enhance visitor experience while supporting curation practices; a visual laboratory classroom where works of art are installed for students’ coursework observation; and collaborative offices to support staff and a volunteer docent core in determining museum activities and collections presentation.
Other key objectives included enabling arts programming and unique education opportunities, becoming a cocurricular and extracurricular space on campus, and reflecting the Museum’s identity as a public art museum that belongs to the community. To address this vision, spaces such as the welcoming entry plaza and lobby will allow the Museum to host community events, community theatre performances, university dance and music performances, outdoor classes, and day-to-day campus activity. The design emphasizes transparency within the daylight-filled entry lobby and creates visual ties to the Museum’s neighboring park and academic buildings. Occupiable volumes that serve as light wells connect the Museum’s three floors and create an intuitive pathway for visitor experience. A central exterior courtyard also establishes connections to daylight and nature in additional display space where visitors can observe sculptural installations. Visitors can enjoy the building’s terraces which serve as active spaces for socializing, activities, and school visits.
Winners were honored at the awards dinner held in New York on May 21, 2023.
