The Fisher Foundation has decided to start selling pieces from the Fisher Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art collection. As a past director of the Central Iowa Art Association, I am saddened, disappointed and just plain sick to my stomach to their lack of foresight.

For nearly eight years, my office was just outside the gallery that housed the Fisher Collection. Every morning when I came to work, I always checked to make sure that the Mary Cassatt pastel was still hanging facing me as I unlocked my door. Even though the room was dated by modern standards, it provided a calm restful island.

Few Marshalltown residents knew a fabulous collection of fine art was located in town, and fewer even visited the art. However, people who understood culture and understood the treasures that encompassed the collection, loved it and made an effort to visit the exhibition. TheCIAA kept a guest book inside the gallery. Most of our visitors came via the AAA travel book or the Iowa Travel Guide, and a significant number of the engineers who came from other countries for training at Emerson/Fisher Controls facilities, would also remark on the expansiveness and completeness of the small collection. In my eight years, as a docent of the art, never do I ever remember the Mayor or City Council taking a tour of the art, though.

Pam Muench, a teacher at Lenihan Middle School, brought her entire art class annually to study and research the paintings in the room and to study the ceramics collection as did another teacher, Julie Bousum. Many of the students were amazed that the painters had to create their own paint-using dried flowers, ground semi valuable stones or other natural elements and then mix into the oil. They didn’t realize that paint in tubes only became available to artists in the late 1800s and then it was very expensive.

Although the Signac is not technically considered an Impressionist piece, the significance of the painting that is pictured in the Oct. 15 Times-Republican, lies in the fact of how the painting was created. Every drop of color was a single drop of color from the tip of a brush, culminating in a kaleidoscope of colors representing a harbor and a sailing ship.

Marshalltown may have an Art and Culture Alliance, but as far as II’m concerned it has no regard for art. The public art that they placed in the community is not admired or appreciated by most of the community. I say that because Marshalltown is a community of workers not aristocrats. The legends who created art and dedication to art: the Fishers, the Tyes, the Norris family, the Coopers, the Browns, etc. have nearly all passed on and their heirs couldn’t give a fig if Signac’s painting remained in town or was part of someone’s collection in Dubai or Newark!

What I surmise happened was the Fisher Foundation did not carry enough insurance to restore the Fisher Community Center after the derecho and the tornado, not enough to repair the damage to the Martha Ellen Tye Theater and cover the extensive renovations to the building. There are no longer rich industrialists to underwrite large donations for art-so the only remaining asset available to them to complete the repairs of the theater is the art collection. The decision was made to break down the art collection piece by piece and use it for something that will be of absolutely no use to the working people of Marshalltown – not that the Tye Theater hasn’t waited long enough…Are we even sure the Marshalltown Community Theater organization will be able to afford use the Tye theater? Do the members of the Fisher Foundation realize that once a valuable gem is lost, it can never be replaced? One of their big mistakes was not returning the entire collection to display. Once again, I surmise they didn’t have enough cash to cover the cost of insurance to put the entire collection on display to the public. Does the Foundation realize that the art could be loaned out for a fee?

I remembers First Nighters from Tye Theater in the Auditorium and enjoyed watching Martha Ellen Tye Dance to a three-piece band there the opening night of a play. I had an overnight Girl Scout sleepover on the floor of the Fisher Auditorium and remember the brass statues of the Fisher children inside the door of the FCC. I loved learning the history of each painting and how it came to be in the collection. Even the stolen painting story was a wonderful story to relate.

When Bill Fisher build and donated the Fisher Community Center to Marshalltown residents, his purpose was to provide a free or low-cost meeting area for not-to-profit organizations to meet. He specifically designed an art center for the CIAA to offer classes and opportunities for children and adults to come and learn how to express themselves in art and learn to appreciate art. However, years ago, the management of the FCC was handled badly, perhaps an endowment for building upkeep and management was not enough, perhaps there were no forward-looking individuals realizing the building was an albatross. As the cost of the building upkeep and management grew, so did the rent for the free sites and suddenly it became too costly for small not for profits to use. They ceased using the facility.

I still carry one of the brochures describing the Fisher Impressionist Gallery collection with me to relate to new friends the valuable site in Marshalltown — sadly, the document is showing its age and may soon be completely out of date. I will forever remember and love the dark green indirectly lit art gallery that made Marshalltown so incomparable.

Marshalltown has a unique opportunity to represent a multitude of cultures. Every Hispanic person comes from different states in Mexico and Central and South America, and each state has its own traditions, costumes, celebrations and culture. The same is true of the immigrants from the Orient, the Ukraine, the Phillipines, Southeast Asia and Europe. They brought with them culture unique to their homeland. I don’t see the local Art Alliance paying any regard to them – but that’s another discussion for a different day.

Marshalltown was my hometown. I grew up there. My dad and mom had a business on Main Street. My sister and I walked to St. Mary’s to school and walked home. I shopped downtown with my first babysitting money, rode my bike fourteen blocks to a bakery on 13th Street, worked for Mercy West Hospital on State Street, graduated from Lenihan Catholic High School and from Marshalltown Community College. I began my 30+ year banking career at Commercial State Bank on Main Street.

I spent lots of time at the downtown public library (it was the “arranged” place to meet 7th grade boys on Saturday afternoon,) before going to Marco Music to pick out a new 45. My sister and I spent lots of summer days at the Orpheum and the Strand, swan at Apgar pool in the park, and stopped at Mead’s Dairy for chocolate ice cream cones or the A&W Root Beer stand.

Marshalltown now is the site where my parents-Bob and Agnes Brush and my sister, Major Linae Brush (US Army ret) now lie and that it will always remain.

I sometimes wonder if Bill Fisher’s dad hadn’t chosen Marshalltown and he hadn’t helped design a means to control water in local fire hydrants with the unique Fisher Control valve, perhaps Ames or Cedar Rapids or Des Moines might have cherished Jasper (Bill) Fisher’s love of art and his gifted collection more.

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Janet Busch of Toledo, a Marshalltown native, is the former director of the Central Iowa Art Association.