The Midwestern floods

In the early 1990s, when I was matriculating at the University of Missouri (which is where I learned that word), the state suffered through two massive floods. One was a '500-year flood' and another was a '100-year flood,' which taught me that the combination of God and the Army Corps of Engineers was truly to be feared. I'll never forget spending summer nights sandbagging at Rocheport, Missouri. The heat and humidity, even after 10pm, was unbearable, and the stench from all the organic material rotting in the fast-flowing river was Augean. But each night it seemed like all of mid-Missouri was there, doing whatever we could.

Since I moved away from the Midwest I've noticed that Easterners tend to roll their eyes at middle-American floods, to consider them disasters that trail earthquakes or hurricanes as horrors. Phooey on that. People lived in these houses. There are more sad, remarkable photos at the Iowa City Press-Citizen's website.

There are lots of ways to explain the disaster, but this is an art site so I'll focus on the University of Iowa Museum of Art. It is closed and flooded. The Press-Citizen reports that there is three-to-four feet of water in the museum itself. A post on the museum's blog says that the art is safe. (UPDATE: I'm reliably told that the museum got all of its best art out, but that some works were left behind.)

The pictures tell the story: Here's the outside of the museum. Here's the art campus.  (Photographer Allyson Bone: "Iowa arts is totally screwed.") Here's the water rising at the museum. Here's art leaving the museum ahead of the flood.

The museum has a too-little-known but super collection, including this landmark 1943 Pollock. You can see how close the museum and the Steven Holl-designed School of Art and Art History were to the Iowa River here. Expect to read much more on MAN about the museum and recovery efforts in the coming weeks. (And have your Visa cards ready.)

Of course, even before the Army Corps dredged its way through the region the Midwest occasionally suffered fearsome floods. As you might expect these floods left a substantial impression on American painters, none moreso than Thomas Hart Benton, who was a Missourian through and through. I've presented two of his paintings here. The one at the top of this post is 1958's Spring Storm, from the collection of the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa. That lightning bolt is literally carved into board. The second painting is Benton's 1945 Spring on the Missouri, from the North Carolina Museum of Art.

UPDATE: More photos.