Dubuque by Design
November 2, 2024 - February 9, 2025
Dubuque may seem an unlikely home of design—and DuMA an unlikely home for a
beer can, pajamas, and a snow-removal machine—but Dubuque by Design is full of surprises.
From the moment engineers solved Dubuque’s first design challenge of getting people
and goods across the Mississippi River, the city has been a wellspring of creativity and
ingenuity, traits that Dubuque is drawing on to shape its future.
This exhibition reveals the iconic products, objects, and artworks that put Dubuque on the design map—from buttons to bridges and from pews to pajamas—and gives visitors a glimpse of the design projects of the future, including the Museum’s new campus.
Beginning with the Museum’s origins as the Dubuque Art Association in the Lorimier House in 1874, Dubuque by Design offers a tour through Dubuque’s design history, encompassing eight broad areas of enterprise, including architecture, graphic design, transportation, industrial design, fashion, and interior design. You’ll encounter familiar products that you wouldn’t have associated with Dubuque, like Lange Ski Boots; the world’s first plastic ski boots, still sold today, were improbably born in the mountainless plains of the American Midwest. You’ll learn the backstory of the 1957 movie The Pajama Game starring Doris Day, which was based on a strike in 1890 at Dubuque’s H. B. Glover Manufacturing Company, one of the first manufacturers of menswear west of Chicago and the inventor of adjustable pajamas.
Such tantalizing historical tales and objects set the stage for a celebration of Dubuque’s design future and DuMA’s new campus, an elegant solution for the city based on geography, community, and cooperation—the essence of design itself.
A central feature of the exhibition is a special collaboration between DuMA and graduate students from the University of Iowa, led by Monica Correia, professor of 3D Design in the School of Art, Art History, and Design. Flooded with light, the Museum’s lobby windows will be filled with the work of 13 students inspired by the Tiffany Studio’s stained glass windows in Dubuque’s St. Luke’s United Methodist Church (see samples at right). The colors and shapes in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Tiffany windows became a class project that resulted in new designs for the exhibition. “We are delighted to see historic designs spark new creations everyone can enjoy,” commented Gary Stoppelman, the Museum’s executive director.
Challenging students to think of design in the “real world” rather than via AutoCAD software and flat monitors, DuMA and Correia charged them with creating experiences for visitors with light and color. “This has been an amazing collaboration,” said Correia. “As designers, we like to have problems to solve, and working with the conditions in DuMA’s lobby brought restrictions to the students that pushed their work to another level. This partnership gives students the opportunity to collaborate, reconfigure, and see their work presented professionally.”
The exhibition identifies themes that transcend chronology and extend our understanding of the breadth of media that designers use. The exhibition explores designs related to manufacturing, transportation, graphic design, architecture, urban design, fashion, and interiors, as well as landscape.
Dubuque by Design elevates often underappreciated designs and highlights the intersection of art and everyday life. Art can be found inside the engines of automobiles, the buttons that fasten our clothes, the bridges that traverse the Mississippi, the multi-use greenways that protect us from floods and improve the quality of our water, and exquisite architectural details seen on our daily walks.
This exhibition is an opportunity to learn from and interact with the creative minds of the past and catalyze larger conversations around place and community expression as we look to the future.
Dubuque by Design was guest curated by Josephine Shea and organized by the Dubuque Museum of Art.
Exhibition partners include private collectors as well as:
University of Iowa, School of Art,
Art History, and Design
Loras College Center for Dubuque History
Dubuque County Historical Society
Carnegie-Stout Public Library
Encyclopedia Dubuque
Heritage Works
Schulhof Rashidi Architects
Some of the featured designs are from:
Adams-Farwell
A.Y. McDonald Manufacturing Co.
Betty Jane Candies
Busy Bee Café
City of Dubuque
Clarke University Art & Design
Dubuque Altar Manufacturing Co.
Dubuque Packing Co.
Eagle Point Park
Farley & Loetscher Manufacturing Co.
Fenelon Place Elevator
H. B. Glover Co.
Gronen Restoration
John Deere Dubuque Works
Klauer Manufacturing Co.
Lange Ski Boots
Lock and Dam No. 11
Roshek Brothers Department Store
Trappist Caskets
The Wanderwood Gardens
Views from the Exhibition
