Pamela J. White speaks about the painting like it's a pet.

"It doesn't like to travel," she said.

She's talking about Ad Reinhardt's Abstract Painting, which is the work most likely to get blank stares in the Figge Art Museum exhibit A Legacy for Iowa: Pollock's Mural & Modern Masterworks from the University of Iowa Museum of Art.

Abstract Painting doesn't like to travel because it's the most fragile work in the University of Iowa Museum of Art's collection, said White, the museum's interim director. When you get close to the piece, you can see that the paint in the corners is cracked. And because of the nature of the work, there's no obvious way to restore or conserve it.

It initially looks like a black square. On closer inspection, it reveals itself as nine black-ish squares.

Figge Executive Director Sean O'Harrow explained the painting this way: "It's about the nature of color, the nature of squares. It's about texture. It's about a general feeling that you get from the work."

But just as important for this exhibit, Abstract Painting represents the challenges of modern art; this is the sort of theoretical work that baffles and frustrates many people -- in a My kid could do that way. "Whether or not you understand it, for people it's modern art," O'Harrow said. "And people recognize that this is what modern art looks like."

Don't run away. Even if you dislike modern art (or think you dislike modern art), A Legacy for Iowa -- which technically opens April 19 even though the paintings can be viewed by the public now -- is a great opportunity to acquaint (or reacquaint) yourself with the Figge: It's an ideal match of modern work and modern venue, facilitated by last year's flood in Iowa City.

Following the departure of the Left Bank Art League from Gallery West in the District of Rock Island, MidCoast Fine Arts plans to launch a new artist-staffed sales gallery at the site next month.

MidCoast Fine Arts has hosted exhibits at its Gallery West location at 1629 Second Avenue for nearly seven years, with assistance from an operational partner staffing the space and taking on utility costs - originally the ArtFX gallery, and most recently the Left Bank Art League. But Left Bank vacated the space at the end of December, ending a partnership that began in 2005.

Sound & Vision began as a group of guys searching for a place to practice with and record their bands. Located at 1316 Fourth Avenue in downtown Moline, it now features a recording studio, an art gallery, screen-printing, recording workshops, DJ-ing, and custom speaker cabinets.

"It really started in my dad's basement," said Ray Malone, one of eight contributors, in an interview at the studio. Between then and the current situation, the men rented four different spaces, the last being a two-bedroom house in Davenport. "When we were in a house, the control room was set up on the second floor," Malone said. "We did all of the recording downstairs. There was a lot of going up and down stairs to move a mic an inch."

Some collectors purchase artworks to accentuate a room. The pieces in Delores De Wilde Bina's current exhibition at the Bucktown Center for the Arts, however, are the room.

"Okay, so you hang one on the wall in your studio, and it's seven and a half feet tall," the Davenport artist recalls telling someone at the exhibit's opening. "That's almost floor-to-ceiling. And then the wingspan is eight-foot, and ... .

"Oops!" she exclaims with a laugh. "We've just filled this whole wall!"