For four weeks this fall, the walls of the West Des Moines Public Library will hold something closer to a family album than an art show. "Forgotten Iowa Illustrated," a free, drop-in display of illustrations by author and artist Bob Cunningham, opens October 16 and runs through November 15, 2026, at 4000 Mills Civic Parkway. The exhibit is organized into weekly themes that walk visitors from the state's earliest days to the present: Bygone Days (1850–1939), Midcentury Memories (1940–1959), Growing Up (1960–1979), and Modern History (1980 to today).
The arc of those decades is not an arbitrary frame. It is, in a sense, the shape of Cunningham's own life, and the reason he paints at all.
Cunningham grew up in Manson, a small Calhoun County town in northwest Iowa. On June 28, 1979, an F4 tornado tore through it. The storm killed three people and demolished hundreds of homes, cutting a path from the northwest through the heart of the city to the southeast. Manson's central business district was shattered, with dozens of businesses destroyed; the middle school was lost along with roughly 110 homes, and another 139 were damaged. The local General Telephone Company exchange building was completely destroyed — the first time that had ever happened in Iowa. Because the tornado struck in daylight, many potential casualties were avoided, and afterward hundreds of volunteers banded together to rebuild.
The town came back. But something else did not. As Cunningham puts it in his artist statement, the townsfolk recovered, yet "their once vibrant collective memories are fading away." That loss — not the buildings, but the recollections — became the engine behind his Forgotten Iowa work.
"Each of us, regardless of which town we call home, should feel obligated to share our recollections for the enlightenment and enrichment of future generations," he says. "That's why I paint portraits with words and tell tales in Technicolor."
That phrase — portraits with words, tales in Technicolor — describes his method as much as his style. Cunningham's Forgotten Iowa illustrations are dense with the small, specific details of bygone events in cities and towns across the state, the kind of minutiae that only someone who was there, or who listened carefully to someone who was, would think to include. The point is not nostalgia for its own sake. The point, as the library's program description puts it, is that the pictures "inspire us to share our own stories — monumental or minuscule — with family and friends."
Cunningham's route to this work runs through a half-century of commercial art. He has spent his career as a commercial illustrator and automotive historian. His honors include a Best of Show Addy Award from the Advertising Professionals of Iowa and an Award of Excellence from the Art Directors Association of Iowa, along with recognition from other organizations. He also spent twelve years at Wells Fargo, a stretch he has described as among the most meaningful of his long career.
His influences reach back to childhood in Manson. "As a child growing up in Manson, I admired Norman Rockwell's Saturday Evening Post cover illustrations," he has said. "Rockwell's iconic portraits of mid-century America have influenced my work ever since." The comparison is apt: like Rockwell, Cunningham works in a warm, readable, deeply researched register, treating ordinary American life as worthy of careful attention.
His subject matter is broader than Iowa memory alone. Cunningham is the author of seven books, including "Too Little Too Soon: America's Early Economy Cars" and "Orphan Babies — America's Forgotten Economy Cars," both products of his automotive-history obsession. One of his illustrations documents a piece of that history with an Iowa connection: in 1935, a full five years before the first "jeep" was built, U.S. Army Lt. Homer G. Hamilton, stationed at Fort Des Moines, sketched his idea of an ideal lightweight off-road vehicle.
But it is his 2022 book, "Manson Iowa: The First 150 Years," that ties most directly to the Forgotten Iowa project. Written by Cunningham and published as part of the community's sesquicentennial celebration, the book's proceeds financed restoration work at the Manson Fairgrounds — a hometown history that literally helped rebuild a piece of the hometown.
His Forgotten Iowa stories and illustrations are a recurring feature in Our Iowa magazine, where readers find them in every issue. The magazine itself has an Iowa story worth knowing: it was established in 2007 by publisher Roy Reiman, who had sold Reiman Publications and retired but wanted a way to test new publishing ideas, and editor Jerry Wiebel, who had grown restless at Reiman Publications after Reiman left. The two spent months developing the concept; Jerry and his wife Paula moved to Ames that spring to set up the company, and the premiere issue mailed in October 2007. It has since grown into the largest print publication in the state, built on a "just for Iowans — written by Iowans" mission. Cunningham's work — described by the magazine as photomontages of old memories created in his West Des Moines studio — has been part of that run.
Cunningham has taken the Forgotten Iowa material on the road before. In July 2025, he gave an artist talk and exhibition in Pocahontas as part of that community's 155th anniversary celebration, held at Saints Peter & Paul Catholic Church. A highlight was his story of Princess Pocahontas, the statue that has greeted tourists in northwest Iowa since 1954. "The sentinel princess has been delighting tourists since she first graced northwest Iowa in 1954," he said at the time.
The West Des Moines exhibit is a quieter affair — a display rather than a lecture, open to all ages, with no ticket required. Visitors can come and go across the month, though the weekly themes mean the show changes character as it moves through the decades. Week one reaches back to the state's frontier era. Week two settles into the postwar boom. Week three lands squarely in the years Cunningham himself was growing up, the same years that ended with the Manson tornado. Week four brings the story up to the present.
Taken together, the four weeks amount to an argument. Cunningham's contention is that the ordinary details of small-town life — the storefronts, the school events, the local characters, the things that happened once and were never written down — are worth preserving with the same care given to famous battles and founding fathers. When a tornado takes the business district, the buildings can be rebuilt by volunteers. The memories are harder. They survive only if someone bothers to tell them, and someone else bothers to listen.
That is the invitation the library is extending through mid-November: come look at a stranger's recollections of Iowa, and leave inclined to write down your own.