Exhibitions
With over three hundred works by local and regional artists, the Hearst Center Permanent Collection provides a fascinating perspective on Iowa, the Midwest and the nation.
For more information on exhibitions and the permanent collection, email
Curator/Registrar, Emily Drennan.
To propose exhibition or a gift to the permanent collection, view our Hearst proposal guidelines.
CURRENT
DANA POTTER: PATTERNS OF DISTRACTIONS
September 11-November 23, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 11 from 5:30-700 p.m.
AI in the Arts Panel Discussion: Friday, November 21 at 3:00 p.m. featuring digital artists Dana Potter, Joseph dunning, and Bettina Fabos of Forepan Iowa.
About the AI in the Arts Panel Discussion: This engaging panel will examine how artificial intelligence is transforming the way artists create, archive, and interpret visual culture. Potter and Dunning will share insights into their innovative practices, while Fabos will highlight how Fortepan Iowa—a curated digital archive of everyday Iowans’ photographs—uses technology to honor the poetic and often overlooked moments of our shared history. Discover how AI can amplify the artistic process, raise new ethical questions, and expand access to the stories that shape our communities. Free and open to the public. Come curious!
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Patterns of Distraction contextualizes the social media feed as a spectacle using kaleidoscopic filters to generate video, print, and augmented reality. The kaleidoscope, invented by accident in the early 1800s during a scientific study of light, uses three mirrors arranged in a triangle to create endless, symmetrical patterns from small bits of glass and light. With just a little movement, it becomes as mesmerizing as fireworks or waterfalls. At the center of the exhibition is a video that transforms screen recordings from Snapchat and TikTok into geometric patterns. Like social media algorithms, the kaleidoscope repeats and arranges content into a system designed to hold our attention. This exhibition alters how we experience social media and reorients our attention to repetition, distraction, and visual appeal.
SWEET FACE: AN INSTALLATION BY JOSEPH DUNNING
September 11-November 23, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 11 from 5:30-700 p.m.
AI in the Arts Panel Discussion: Friday, November 21 at 3:00 p.m. featuring digital artists Dana Potter, Joseph dunning, and Bettina Fabos of Forepan Iowa.
About the AI in the Arts Panel Discussion: This engaging panel will examine how artificial intelligence is transforming the way artists create, archive, and interpret visual culture. Potter and Dunning will share insights into their innovative practices, while Fabos will highlight how Fortepan Iowa—a curated digital archive of everyday Iowans’ photographs—uses technology to honor the poetic and often overlooked moments of our shared history. Discover how AI can amplify the artistic process, raise new ethical questions, and expand access to the stories that shape our communities. Free and open to the public. Come curious!
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Sweet Face is a dual-facing projector installation that presents normalized life. Excerpts of reality, fiction, and the convoluted relationship between the two materialized in the everyday are on display. Carefully constructed from natural and artificial materials, Sweet Face exists in a state of physical opposition. This duality is also present in the work’s classification, situated somewhere between film and object: you may leave and return without missing any beginning or end, as innumerable unique instances and relationships are produced on the screen. A distinct dichotomy emerges within the installation’s subject matter: video excerpts are indefinitely competing with and being compared to one another. The installation offers a space to collectively consider the relationships between the moving images and their place within the context of our lives.
A select work of framed flower images from local artists.
A select work of framed flower images from local artists.
Botanical Perspectives: Thursday Painters Group Show
October-November, 2025
Artist Reception: Sunday, October 19 from 1:30-3:30 p.m. in the lower level at the Hearst Center. Refreshments are provided.
Featuring: Nancy Barsic, Kim Behm, Jan Bernhard, Marion Boyer, Linda Carney, Cynthia Demkiw, Mary Disburg, Barb Doeden, Alice Dolgener, Janet Drake, Larry Erickson, Deanna Graas, Rowena Hardinger, Jan Hix, Sheri Huber-Otting, Julie Hughes, Daryl Kress, Lanxin Li, Ann Renee Lighter, Brad Mattocks, Twyla Moschel, Judy Muniz, Ann Olsson, Dianne Peterson, Byron Plumley, Merle Poland,
Ginny Poppen, Paula Schrad, Bonnie Smith, Evie Waack, Penny Wang, and Marion Wiley.
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For this exhibition, members of the Thursday Painters were invited to explore the theme of flowers—interpreting the natural world through a range of personal styles and media. The resulting works span delicate floral closeups, expressive abstracts, plein air landscapes, and intimate still-life studies rendered in paint, ink, charcoal, collage, and assemblage.
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The Thursday Painters, now numbering more than sixty active artists, represent the Cedar Valley’s longest-standing art group. For over seventy-seven years, these local artists have gathered weekly to paint together, encourage one another, and share in creative fellowship. Meeting each Thursday at the Hearst Center—and often outdoors for plein air sessions and artist retreats—they continue a remarkable tradition of community and creativity that has shaped the region’s visual arts legacy.
–Cory Hurless, Cultural Programs Supervisor
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Consider supporting local artists! Many of these artworks are for sale, if you are interested in purchasing any artworks on display, stop by the front desk where we can connect you with the artist.
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UPCOMING
John Page Print
John Page Print
PERMANENT COLLECTION: MIDWEST
December 18, 2025-March 15, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, December 18 from 5:30-700 p.m. Food, beverage, and musical performance by our Education Assistant, Liudmila Lebedeva
This selection of works features the physical and social landscape of the Midwest. Etchings made for a handmade book by a class of John Page’s students will be shown for the first time. Works commissioned for the 2006 exhibition Field & Verse will be shown alongside the James Hearst poetry that inspired them. These sculptures made by Thaddeus Erdahl, Rich Robertson, Brad Travis, and Margaret Whiting and the paintings made by Angela Battle and Frje Echeverria were acquired for the permanent collection as part of that project
FIRES: PAINTINGSI BY SAW NAING LIN
January 6–March 8, 2026
Through the vivid lens of memory, Fires traces the life and displacement of Burmese painter Saw Naing Lin, from tranquil childhood moments tending water buffalo in the countryside to the harrowing experiences of hiding in forest caves as his village was overtaken by violence.
Comprising approximately twenty narrative paintings, each accompanied by a descriptive text, the exhibition reads as a visual memoir. Lin’s use of bright, stylized forms and expressive color belies the gravity of his subject matter, transforming scenes of human-rights trauma into poignant acts of witness and remembrance. Stay tuned for programming updates associated with this exhibition, coming soon.
Online l Hearst Permanent Collection
John Page
View original etchings as part of the Hearst Permeant Collection.
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Gary Kelley l Sleepy Hollow
View the original pastels in the Hearst Permanent Collection as part of the 1990 novel, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Original Book Illustrations by Gary Kelley.
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Exhibition James Hearst Interpreting The Farmstead l The Hearst Legacy Site
View original works of art selected from the Hearst Permanent Collection, as part of this grant funded project.