(Radio Iowa) – Iowa State University’s long-running art rental program is ending after five decades. It allowed hundreds of students, faculty, staff and even local Ames residents to rent artwork from the university’s Memorial Union for a fraction of their original cost. Letitia Kenemer, the Memorial Union arts coordinator, says demand has fallen since the program was launched in the mid-1970s. “We still have renters, we still have people that come in,” she says, “but we just don’t have as much as we used to.”

ISU photo

The collection once offered nearly 300 works of art for people to keep for up to two years at a time, but the numbers have dwindled in recent years. “It was no longer actually making any income and the rentals had gone down,” Kenemer says, “and we tried some different things, but it just hasn’t been as robust as it used to be.”

More than 200 framed prints and posters from the collection will be available for purchase at I-S-U Surplus during the first week of August, with prices starting at just $10.