Library hopes for cultural center

COUNCIL BLUFFS — From the outset of the effort to collect and conserve the Grant Wood mural from the Corn Room of the once-opulent Hotel Chieftain in Council Bluffs, the Bluffs Arts Council and its president, Dick Miller, have been dreaming of the day that the city would open an arts and cultural center that would house the segments.

But that dreamed-of arts and cultural center could offer visitors much more than a sampling of Wood’s work. Just ask Barbara Peterson, director of the Council Bluffs Public Library.

Peterson said the library’s expansive collection that includes paintings, posters, diaries and more is the facility’s “best kept secret.” And that, she emphasized, is not to be confused with “willingly held secret.”

Over the years, scores of area residents have donated materials to the library; and the library, unfortunately, has no place to display them.

Most of the material, some of it quite valuable, is housed in secured storage areas at the library.

“I wish they could have built this facility with a third floor,” Peterson said, “an area that could be used for the arts and cultural center that both Dick and I would like to open in Council Bluffs.”

Hanging on the wall of the library boardroom where Peterson was speaking was an oil painting of Kanesville, the forerunner of Council Bluffs. According to Miller, it was one of the paintings that inspired the murals Wood painted in the Hotel Chieftain’s smaller Pioneer Room.

It’s not readily available for viewing, and Peterson would like to change that.

“Council Bluffs has a lot of great history and artifacts from that history,” Peterson said. “The fact there is no place to display those artifacts is sad.”

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