In the Music Room at the Muscatine Art Center

Thursday, November 5, 2015 from 5:30-6:30 p.m.

FREE ADMISSION

Historian Tom Rasmussen and author Judith Healy will present "The Weyerhaeusers and the Mussers," explaining the important relationship between Peter Musser and Frederick Weyerhaeuser both as partners in the lumber business and good friends. The program, held on Thursday, November 5^th at 5:30 p.m. in the Art Center's Music Room, is free and open to the public.

Tom Rasmussen is the great-great grandson of Sarah and Frederick Weyerhaeuser and has completed extensive personal research on the Weyerhaeuser family and Judith Healy is the author of the book, Frederick Weyerhaeuser and the American West (2013). Using amazing photographs of bygone days, of forests and villages and family celebrations, Rasmussen and Healy will present the story of these two self-made timbermen both of whom were as much family men as business men.

The history of Frederick Weyerhaeuser is also the history of the settling of the Midwest. A towering figure of the later decades of the 1800s, Frederick Weyerhaeuser made his fortune by founding and growing a timber business that depended on the mighty Mississippi. Although he made his home in Rock Island, his business affected the Iowa side of the border as much as the Illinois side, and all was fed by the timber his men took out of the Wisconsin forests.

In the book, Frederick Weyerhaeuser and the American West, Judith Healey presents Weyerhaeuser as a successful businessman and family man. With only six years of formal schooling himself, Weyerhaeuser sent his children to eastern colleges, and in his later years, became a philanthropist who generously supported projects locally and in his native German village.

Peter Musser was one of Muscatine's leading citizens. Born in Pennsylvania of Swiss and English parentage, his connection with the Iowa lumber trade began in the early 1870s. Musser was head of a saw mill which produced 40 million feet of lumber annually. He was also a large holder of Minnesota and Wisconsin timber lands and an active logging trader. Throughout the northwest, he was known for his farsighted business judgment.

In his northern ventures, Peter Musser was an associate of Frederick Weyerhaeuser, whose pioneer enterprise in timber tracts along the upper Mississippi and its tributaries made him nationally known as "Lumber King of the Northwest." Musser and Weyerhaeuser jointly located their two sons - Drew Musser and Charles Weyerhaeuser - in Little Falls, Minnesota to run a lumber operation. The two sons built mansion side-by-side - today, both homes are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Weyerhaeuser mansion is open as the Linden Hill Historic Museum.

The program on November 5^th is free and open to the public. Reservations are not required. Please contact Melanie Alexander, Director, with any questions or concerns at 563-263-8282 or by email at malexander@muscatineiowa.gov.

The Muscatine Art Center is located at 1314 Mulberry Avenue in Muscatine, Iowa. Hours are Tuesday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Thursday evenings until 7:00 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. Admission is free. Donations are appreciated. Visit www.muscatineartcenter.org for more information about programs and events and to download a class brochure.

Davenport, Iowa (October 14, 2015) - A new exhibition will open at the Figge Art Museum on Saturday in the first floor Orientation Gallery. Wendy Red Star: Peelatchiwaaxpaash/Medicine Crow (Raven) and the 1880 Crow Peach Delegation Contemporary is a mixed media installation by artist Wendy Red Star.

Red Star creates multimedia works that explore Native American identity and the distance between romantic images of the Native American?such as those by Edward S. Curtis?and the world of Indians today.

In Red Star's installation a widely available 1880 photograph of the Crow Peace Delegation to Washington, which included Red Star's ancestor Medicine Crow (Peelatchiwaaxpáash), serves as the starting point. It includes Crow regalia, altered photographs and stuffed animals inspired by Medicine Crow's ledger drawings of animals he saw at the National Zoo in Washington, such as the "big snake with legs" (crocodile). A portrait of Medicine Crow superimposed with Red Star's face compresses the generations to show that contemporary Native Americans are a living link with this history.

"I want people to realize that the images of Medicine Crow are more than just a handsome Native man," Red Star writes. "The images represent a human being, a reservation era chief, the forming of the Crow Indian reservation, the loss of Crow lands, the changing of a people, the resilience of a culture."

Raised on the Crow Indian reservation in Montana, Red Star studied art at Montana State University and UCLA and now lives and teaches in Portland, Oregon. Her work is included in the collections of the Portland Art Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts and many other public and private collections.

This exhibition is presented through the Thomas A. and Mary Waterman Gildehaus Endowment Fund at the Figge Art Museum and will be on display through January 17, 2016.

COMPANION EVENTS:
Opening Reception 

Thursday, October 15

5:30 p.m. Reception

7 p.m. Artist Talk: Wendy Red Star

Documentary Film

7 p.m. Thursday, November 5

Heenetiineyoo3eiiiho', or Language Healers, tells the story of Native peoples striving to revitalize their languages and explores the importance of Native languages and cultures to Alaskans.

Talk with Jane Simonsen, PhD

7 p.m. Thursday, November 19

Simonsen will present her research on Native American visual culture as it relates to the exhibition.

Family Day

10 a.m. - 1 p.m. Saturday, January 9, 2016

About the Figge Art Museum

The Figge Art Museum is located on the riverfront in downtown Davenport at 225 West Second Street. Hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday and Sundays noon to 5 p.m. Thursdays the museum is open until 9 p.m. Admission to the museum and tour is $7. Admission is free to Figge members and institutional members, and free to all on Thursday evenings from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. To contact the museum, please call 563.326.7804, or visit www.figgeartmuseum.org.

This program is supported by Humanities Iowa, Illinois Humanities, the Illinois General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The views and opinions expressed by this program do not necessarily reflect those of the supporting agencies.

1717 W 12th St. | Davenport, IA | 563.324.1933 | Putnam.org