Andy Warhol. Maya Lin. Grant Wood. The works of these and other art stars make the workspaces at some local companies much more than a Dilbert-like landscape of gray cubicles and white walls. Although the recession has squashed most companies’ plans to buy new art, existing collections serve to impress visitors, boost employee morale and invigorate the environment. “Employees think differently when they are surrounded by art,” says John Taylor, a project management director at Principal Financial Group Inc., who volunteers as a docent for the company’s collection. “Art engages people.”

On the following pages is a sampling of gems found at five local companies. Typically, employees and clients are the only ones who see the art; however, Principal and Farm Bureau offer tours on request, and American Republic Insurance Co.’s sculpture garden is open to the public. Ladco Development Inc.’s sculptures and installations are outdoors or in public spaces, accessible to anyone.

Ladco Development Inc.

Some of the most innovative corporate-owned art can be found at Ladco properties throughout the metro area, including at the Village of Ponderosa in West Des Moines and the Davis Brown Tower downtown. Ladco, a commercial developer, builder and property manager, is also one of the few companies actively commissioning and buying art these days.

From a project’s earliest stages, Ladco plans how art will be integrated into the architecture, site and streetscape, says Dennis Reynolds, Ladco’s design director and an artist. “We want to appeal to a range of people but without homogenizing the art or making it too ‘safe,’” says Reynolds.

Most of Ladco’s works are in public spaces, so you can easily check them out for yourself. At the YMCA Healthy Living Center in Clive, sculptures of trees, called “Leap of Faith,” mark the University Avenue entrance to the center (photo, page 78). Kansas City artist Jesse Small fashioned the dramatic 12- to 18-foot-tall sculptures out of galvanized steel and grouped them to recall a canopy of trees. 

Next to the building, the installation “Harmony Line,” by Reynolds and local artist TJ Moberg, consists of such elements as recycled glass, natural materials like hay, part of an old hay picker, and repurposed barn timbers and Iowa limestone. The artists decided to convey the concept of wellness by using the materials in a way that “suggests human movement and the body’s complexity,” Reynolds says. They also wanted to reflect Iowa’s agricultural heritage, emphasize environmental sustainability and make the work interactive—you can walk through and touch any part of the installation.

Reynolds says Ladco aims for “density of meaning”—the multiple ways people can interpret a work—in its art selections. He adds that Ladco doesn’t shy away from challenging viewers, “but we also want to make art fun, to allow people enjoy it at whatever place they are in their lives. We don’t take an elitist approach.”

Principal Financial Group Inc.



“Lost Boys” (1993)
By Kerry James Marshall
Acrylic and collage on canvas
Collection of Principal Financial Group Inc.
Photo by Duane Tinkey

With some 740 works, Principal has one of Des Moines’ most prestigious art collections. The company, which started collecting in the 1950s, focuses on contemporary art, with such international heavyweights as Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and Maya Lin represented.

Lin’s “A Shift in Stream,” a site-specific installation for the lobby of Principal’s “Z” building on Seventh Street, consists of seemingly random streams of water trickling down two-story-high glass walls. The water flows into a trough and runs in a horizontal stream along the first-floor wall, behind a jagged opening that looks like a crack in the wall. The piece “gives you a way to experience natural elements inside the building,” says Taylor.

A number of provocative pieces are scattered throughout the company’s downtown campus. For example, Kerry James Marshall’s powerful painting/collage “Lost Boys,” which recently was on loan to the Des Moines Art Center, portrays the orphaned and displaced boys who were victims of Sudan’s 1983–2005 civil war (photo, right). (Marshall, a Chicago artist, has been commissioned to create “A Monumental Journey” for the Principal Riverwalk. The public sculpture will commemorate Des Moines as the birthplace of the National Bar Association, an association consisting predominantly of African-American lawyers and judges.)

Other evocative works include “Three Generations,” a site-specific sculpture that Ames native John Buck created as a statement against war. “The company is very open to works that challenge employees in different ways,” says Taylor. Principal “brings in art that’s representative of the time, (including) pieces that address social issues.”

Principal also encourages employees to express their own artistic talent through “ArtZone,” an in-house gallery for employees’ creations.

Public tours must be arranged ahead of time; call 248.3172 for more information.

FBL Financial Group Inc. (Farm Bureau)

As might be expected, the collection of some 250 original works has plenty of landscapes, including an oil painting of a dramatic sunset over the Midwestern countryside by Gary Bowling, a prolific and popular artist who lives in Missouri (photo, pages 82–83). In her pastels, Bobbie McKibbin, who taught at Grinnell College for 25 years, transforms ordinary small-town and country scenes into compelling landscapes that reveal the character of each place.

Displayed throughout the company’s West Des Moines campus, the collection also features figurative, surreal and abstract paintings as well as sculptures, such as the site-specific “River” metal piece by Mac Hornecker  in the atrium. Hornecker, who taught at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake from 1971 to 2001 and now lives in Arkansas, says his inspiration stems from how the history and topography of the landscape affect both people and the land itself.

“Our goal is to include a range of styles to appeal to a variety of people,” says Jodi Parrott, senior staff facilities planning analyst. ”If employees notice the art—even if they don’t like it—we’ve done our job.”

Farm Bureau offers guided and self-guided tours for small groups or organizations. For more information, call 225.5664.

Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc.



“Portrait of George W. Carver” (1999)
By Mary Kline-Misol
Acrylic on paper
Collection of Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc.
Photo by Duane Tinkey

Much of Pioneer’s extensive art collection pays homage to its history and Iowa’s agricultural heritage. The most notable piece is Grant Wood’s portrait of Henry A. Wallace, who was Pioneer’s founder as well as the U.S. secretary of agriculture from 1933 to 1940 and U.S. vice president from 1941 to 1945. Time magazine commissioned the pastel and pencil work, which ran on the magazine’s cover in 1940. Near the Wallace portrait, a painting by local artist Mary Kline-Misol portrays Iowa botanist, inventor and educator George Washington Carver working in a lab (photo, right). In addition to the painting, a bronze sculpture by Christian Petersen honors Carver, who was an important mentor to Wallace.

Some 70 percent of the Pioneer’s approximate 750 artworks are landscapes and farm scenes by Iowa and regional artists such as Ellen Wagener, Bobbie McKibbin and Stuart Klipper. But abstract and surreal works also are represented, including pieces by Sticks Inc. founder Sarah Grant. A striking seven-foot-tall metal sculpture of a cornstalk, by well-known local artist Karen Strohbeen, perks up an otherwise ordinary stairwell.

“Our employees really appreciate the artwork,” says Michelle Reasor, Pioneer’s facilities development project manager. “It helps to make the workplace comfortable and enjoyable.”

American Republic Insurance Co.

Watson soon began packing the nearly windowless space with post-World War II art, essentially “following his own guts” in selecting the works, says Dave Busick, a retired American Republic employee who assists with the art collection. Powell’s instincts were right on: Paintings, sculptures and mixed-media works from such influential artists as Andy Warhol, Joan Mirô, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein and Barry Flanagan fill the building.

When American Republic moved into the building, it commissioned Warhol to create a portrait of Watson Powell Sr. The famed artist repeated a photographic image of Powell’s head on 32 panels, representing his then-32 years of service to the company. The silkscreen-on-canvas piece, called “The American Man,” was displayed until the late 1990s, when it was traded for another work. But a different Warhol piece, from his “Flowers” series, still hangs in the building’s lobby (photo, above). The 1970 signed work, silkscreen and acrylic on paper, was one of many Warhol produced of the flowers, which were based on a photograph of hibiscus blossoms.

Outdoors, Italian sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro’s 18,000-pound  “Sphere Within Sphere” marks the building’s entrance. Set on an axis, the bronze sculpture revolves like a globe. Pomodoro is known for his sphere sculptures; his most famous are at Vatican City and the United Nations headquarters in New York. A sculpture garden, adjacent to the American Republic building and open to the public, also distinguishes the company’s collection. Works from acclaimed artists such as Michael Pavlovsky—whose compelling “Column of Change” depicts the civil rights struggle—populate the space.