The Dubuque Museum of Art (DuMA) in partnership with Voices Productions and with additional support by Trappist Caskets and Humanities Iowa, is hosting a temporary exhibition of Dana Harrison’s I Am A Man mural at the corner of Bluff Street and 8th Street in downtown Dubuque.

The mural is located on a portion of the west side of a building that is planned for eventual deconstruction.

Mr. Harrison is an Iowa native who discovered a passion for letters and characters in the mid 1990s. He studied under Dasc of the mwck’z (Midwest can controllerz) and the late Sazko of the Belgium bombers, and is a member of the Scarce Elements Crew. Fellow Iowa graffiti writer Asphate will work with Harrison on this mural.

The mural is inspired by a photograph taken on April 8, 1968 by photojournalist Bob Adelman at the memorial march in Memphis, Tennessee for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who had been assassinated just days before. Dr. King was planning to lead the I Am a Man march in Memphis supporting a sanitation workers strike that had begun in February. The workers were striking over their dangerous, low-paying working conditions as well as the racial violence of the era. The man in the image is carrying one of the hundreds of I AM A MAN signs made for the march. Instead of a march led by Dr. King, the man carries it in mourning for Dr. King’s murder.

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Photo: Bob Adelman

The much anticipated K-12 exhibition of artwork from students in the Dubuque Community and Holy Family schools occurs each spring. Biennially, the Museum hosts an exhibition of work by City high school students. Because of the pandemic, the Museum chose to combine these exhibitions and present them in a virtual format. The Dubuque Area K-12 Virtual Exhibition was open to all students and features 150 works in a variety of mediums.

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Dubuque artist Tim Olson finds inspiration in the people and places around him and uses that inspiration to re-imagine historic paintings in his latest series. Olson creates a direct dialogue between Midwestern life and masterpieces from the Renaissance to the 19th century. The exhibition features twelve new oil on panel paintings.

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Image credit: Tim Olson, Self Portrait with a Temperature of 97.1, 2020, oil on panel, 25 x19 inches

This exhibition is a major retrospective of the growth of the museum’s collection over the last two decades. Many works are on view in the museum for the first time. Included in the exhibition are key acquisitions by local, regional, and international artists like Thomas Hart Benton, Salvador Dali, J.J. Kavanaugh, Mark Chamberlain, Elizabeth Eagle, Rose Frantzen, Arthur Geisert, Ernest Garthwaite, Criss Glasell, the Lasansky family, Stanislas Lepine, Francesco Licciardi, Jessica Teckemeyer, Ellen Wagener, Joseph Walter, Marcia Wegman, Grant Wood, and Zane York.

image credit: Sr. Helen Kerrigan, BVM, Self-Portrait, 1974, oil on canvas, 61 1/4 x 48 1/4 inches, Gift of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 2020.14