More than 253,590 people visited the University of Iowa Museum of Art exhibition titled "Jackson Pollock’s Mural: Energy Made Visible" at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection during the Venice Art Biennale, setting an international record for an Iowa art exhibition.

The exhibition was held under the auspices of the State Department’s United States Diplomatic Missions program, and thus had the honor of representing American art during this exposition.

The exhibition presents Pollock’s influential first commission, Mural, along with more than 40 masterpieces by artists such as Lee Krasner, Gjon Mili, Barbara Morgan, Robert Motherwell, and Andy Warhol. Most of the works are from the UI collection, but the show also includes loans from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and others.

“This exhibition and accompanying lectures and presentations from the University of Iowa Museum of Art constitute one of the highest, if not the highest, achievement for an Iowa organized exhibition on the world stage,” says UIMA Director Sean O’Harrow. “What it tells people everywhere is that the art collection at the University of Iowa is clearly one of the most significant in American modern art, and what it tells people from Iowa is that they should be proud of this heritage and Iowa’s role in developing American and world culture during the 20th century.”