The Ruth Suckow Traveling Exhibit, 2024 Schedule

Ruth Suckow Traveling Exhibit

 

The Ruth Suckow Memorial Association, with the support of Humanities Iowa, is pleased to announce the creation of a Traveling Exhibit celebrating the life and work of Iowa novelist and short story writer Ruth Suckow who lived from 1892 to 1960. 

We are launching the Traveling Exhibit on January 1, 2024, as part of the Centennial Celebration of Suckow’s first novel, Country People.  Host sites have been scheduled for 2024 and we are now scheduling for 2025.


Ruth Suckow Traveling Exhibit

 

The Ruth Suckow Memorial Association, with the support of Humanities Iowa, is pleased to announce the creation of a Traveling Exhibit celebrating the life and work of Iowa novelist and short story writer Ruth Suckow who lived from 1892 to 1960. 

We are launching the Traveling Exhibit on January 1, 2024, as part of the Centennial Celebration of Suckow’s first novel, Country People.  Host sites have been scheduled for 2024 and we are now scheduling for 2025.


Applicant Requirements:

1. Non-profit status – such as Iowa public libraries, historical societies, German American groups, and other Iowa cultural organizations.

2. Host contribution: The Exhibit is offered free-of-charge; however, we are asking each hosting institution to take responsibility for mailing or driving the Exhibit shipping box to the next Exhibit site.  (It will contain six 24 x 36 inch panels and a retractable banner).  To reduce mailing (or driving) costs for each hosting organization, we will make every effort to schedule the Traveling Exhibit so that hosting sites will be as close to each other as possible.  We hope this will keep host costs to less than $50.


Download and fill out the form below. Return to lounsberry@gmail.com.

Suckow Traveling Exhibit Application Form.docx

James at the library in Hawarden (above).

The Ruth Suckow Traveling Exhibit

Our talented Vice President, Jim Schaap, traveled to the Hawarden Public Library recently to see the first stop in 2024 of the Ruth Suckow Traveling Exhibit.


How appropriate that the Exhibit is starting where Ruth herself started--in Hawarden!


Hawarden Public Library Director Maddy Vlotho has gone all out with the display--which you will see below in the attached 8 images in the lovely slide share Jim created.  As you will see, the Hawarden Historical Society also contributed items for the display.


The Traveling Exhibit is booked through January 2025.  It will be hosted during 2024 and 2025 by eight of the 12 towns Ruth lived in during her life: Hawarden, LeMars, Manchester, Grinnell, Earlville, Quad Cities (actually Bettendorf, not Davenport), Cedar Falls, and Des Moines.  I have received applications to host in 2025 from the public libraries in Shenandoah and Atlantic as well, but they haven't been scheduled yet.


RSMA President Barbara Lounsberry

The Suckow Exhibit comes to Cedar Falls

Join us on Monday, July 8th at the Cedar Falls Public Library's meeting room for a program, "Iowa Writer Ruth Suckow: The Cedar Falls Connection," at 6 pm to highlight the Traveling Exhibit on Suckow's Life and work, hosted by the library from June 23 through August 4th.

A group of local RSMA members will participate. President Barbara Lounsberry will begin the program with images of Suckow's years in Cedar Falls during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.  A short Reader’s Theatre performance of Suckow’s short story “A Rural Community,” featuring Michael Dargan, Cherie Dargan, and Barbara Lounsberry, will follow. 

Closing the program local Ruth Suckow Memorial Association members Kenneth Lyftogt, Julie Husband, and Jim O’Loughlin will share what drew them to Suckow and her work.

“Ruth Suckow and her handsome husband, Ferner Nuhn, made important contributions to the metro art and literary scenes during their years in the community,” says Barbara Lounsberry, UNI Emerita Professor of English and President of the Ruth Suckow Memorial Association. “This year we are celebrating the centennial of the publication of Suckow’s first novel, Country People, which is set in northeast Iowa. Copies of the new centennial edition of the novel will be available for purchase at the program.”

This event, including punch and desserts, is free and open to the public.

The Ruth Suckow Exhibit .pdf

Country People

The Centennial Edition

Jim O'Loughlin unveils the cover of the new edition of Country People