Editor's Note:The University of Iowa is the university for Iowa. Over the next few weeks we'll be illustrating the many ways that UI serves our state and shapes Iowa's future.

Iowa's most famous painting and one of the world's most significant and iconic Modern masterpieces is back in Iowa this summer after nearly two years of conservation work by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles. Jackson Pollock's famed Mural, the centerpiece of the University of Iowa Museum of Art collection, is on display at the Sioux City Art Center this month until April 2015.

Over 300,000 people visited the painting during its exhibition at the Getty between March and June of this year, making it one of the most popular shows ever for that institution. Mural is considered by many to be the most important modern American painting ever made.

“This painting by Jackson Pollock is the most important work of art in Iowa, and one of the most significant paintings in American art," says Sean O'Harrow, director of the UI Museum of Art. "I am so pleased that after its massive success in Los Angeles, we will have the chance to share it at the Sioux City Art Center for all Iowans to see."

Mural was moved from the UI campus due to the disastrous flooding that hit the Iowa City area in June 2008. In the interim, it has been on display in Davenport and Des Moines, Iowa, and at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, drawing record-breaking attendance numbers.

Now the Sioux City Art Center looks forward to hosting the artwork for the next nine months. Mural will headline the center’s 100th anniversary activities, and center director Al Harris-Fernandez anticipates many people from northwest Iowa and the three nearby bordering states will view this influential exhibit.

"I think this is going to be a banner year for the Sioux City Arts Center, as far as bringing in people from the region to visit the arts center and see the Pollock exhibition," says Harris-Fernandez.