“Mother Goose on the Loose” is a 20-minute nursery rhyme program for newborns to three-year-olds, followed by a 30-minute playtime. This program helps strengthen babies’ and toddlers’ foundation for literacy with rhymes, rhythm, repetition, story and movement.

We always recommend confirming details before attending. We hope to see you there!

Join us for stories, rhymes, and songs.

Grow your child’s love of reading by attending Preschool Story Time. Each week explore new stories, songs, and rhymes.

We always recommend confirming details before attending. We hope to see you there!

This extraordinary exhibition, drawn entirely from the rich collection of the Reading Public Museum, explores the path to Impressionism through the nineteenth century and the complex relationship between French Impressionism of the 1870s and 1880s and the American interpretation of the style in the decades that followed. More than seventy-five paintings and works on paper help tell the story of the new style of painting which developed at the end of the nineteenth century—one that emphasized light and atmospheric conditions, rapid or loose brushstrokes, and a focus on brightly colored scenes from everyday life.

Some of the artists featured in the exhibition include Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt, who exhibited in the official Impressionist exhibitions in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s. Among the earliest American artists to embrace the style were John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, John Henry Twachtman, Childe Hassam, and Frank W. Benson.  A host of American artists who embraced the style by the turn of the century including Robert Lewis Reid, William Paxton, Chauncey Ryder, and Guy Wiggins, are highlighted in the exhibition.

Museum Store Highlight: Susan Reiner

As a companion exhibition to Across the Atlantic, the CRMA will present a selection from the private collection of Tom and Nan Riley.  Drawing exclusively on French works, artists such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro will complement the French works included in Across the Atlantic.  It will be a rare opportunity to see important French works from a local private collection in celebration of the 125^th anniversary of the origins of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.

Retired computer entrepreneur Peter Norton (Norton Antivirus Software) is a contemporary art collector as well as an active participant in various civic and philanthropic activities. In 1988, the Norton Family Christmas Project began commissioning artists to create original, multiple-edition works that were mailed as holiday greetings to friends, colleagues, and selected institutions.  In 2017, the CRMA received the bulk of these wonderful holiday greetings from Director Emeritus Terry Pitts and his wife Kathy Hall.

The objects and artists’ books that comprise the Project collection are incredibly varied. A sense of whimsy runs through many of the pieces: salt and pepper shakers become snow globes, a music box exhorts us to be silent.  Many works also have a sociopolitical focus, addressing issues as varied as slavery, AIDS, and gender identity.  Taken together, the Norton Family Christmas Project objects and artists’ books provide a wonderful snapshot of the last thirty years of activity in the art world at large, presenting the work of both emerging and more established artists.  The 2018 edition of the Norton Family Christmas Project was the last and ended the series.