Art Bites : Ioway in America, Free

Patt Murphy will speak at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art on Wednesday, August 5 at 12:15pm at the museum’s monthly Art Bites program. Murphy is an elder and member of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska and has spent decades promoting and protecting the cultural rights of the Ioway people and educating on Ioway practices. In this presentation, Murphy will illuminate the Ioway’s historic connections to Cedar Rapids, and discuss the individuals represented in the CRMA’s collection of McKenney and Hall portraits of Ioway leaders, Chief Great Walker and Chief White Cloud, among other important figures. These portraits are hand-colored lithographs from the monumental 19th-century publication History of the Indian Tribes of North America. The artwork is on view now in the Visions of America: The Nation at 250 exhibition (on view through September 13, 2026).