Presidential portrait collection adds No. 16

While students studied nearby and university museums staff offered direction, a carpenter duo from facilities planning and management lifted President Wendy Wintersteen's official portrait into position Monday morning on the west wall of the Reading Room in Parks Library. The 16th such portrait for Iowa State, it also is the first to feature a woman.

Users of the Reading Room this week are among the first to enjoy the addition to the presidential portrait series, part of university museums' Art on Campus collection. Additionally, the ISU Foundation Board of Governors volunteer reception will be held in that space Thursday evening, Sept. 25.

The oil on canvas portrait was painted over several months by Maquoketa, Iowa, artist Rose Frantzen, starting with in-person painting time last summer. It measures 40 inches by 56 inches.

When a photograph won't do

University museums director Lynette Pohlman said, in addition to celebrating Iowa State, presidential portraits "commemorate the leadership and the institution so we remember where we came from and what we did."

And while modern photography could serve a similar use, Pohlman said photos don't capture the same life as a portrait, which are much more enduring, she added.

"I can't imagine not having the presidential portraits in our collection," she said.

Frantzen was selected for the Wintersteen portrait in part for her portraiture history at Iowa State. 

In 2016, she painted dean portraits of David Spalding (Business) and Sarah Rajala (Engineering). That also was the year she started the "Faces of Iowa State" portrait series, painting 19 portraits, two daily, live at the Iowa State Fair as part of the university's exhibit. During short campus residencies in 2017, 2020 and 2021, she added 28 more portraits to the "Faces" set, which also is displayed in Parks Library, on the second floor near the central staircase.

Frantzen's first piece for Iowa State was completed in 2015, when university museums and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (then led by dean Wendy Wintersteen) commissioned "Do You Know What's Inside This Flower? George Washington Carver Mentors a Young Henry A. Wallace."