8th Biennial Symposium of the Grant Wood Art Colony at the University of Iowa presents:
Race and Regionalism: Representation in the Heartland
Symposium Dates: Friday-Saturday, April 25-26, 2025
Location: University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
The Grant Wood Art Colony will host the 8th Biennial Symposium focusing on the intersections of racial identity and American Regionalist art April 25-26, 2025, at the University of Iowa.
As one of the leaders of American Regionalism, Grant Wood characterized what he knew about the Midwest by exploring themes like the rural, the quotidian, and the domestic, and encouraged his students to do the same. His graduate student, Elizabeth Catlett, recalled the artist’s instruction at the University of Iowa: “First he said, ‘What are you going to do? It should be something you know most about.’ I decided to do a little Black girl ironing; I knew a lot about ironing.” Wood’s artistic output and teaching elevated a sensibility for everyday intimate moments encapsulating life in the heartland.
But what is the heartland? The term typically conjures up the image of a bygone place through an exclusive nostalgia which so often fails to encompass how Black artists like Elizabeth Catlett and others came to advance the legacy of the American Scene and obscures the various pathways artists took through American Regionalism. Despite being a socially constructed and often indeterminate category, racialized identities of artists, models, and patrons affected the production and imaging of American life. By redressing the multivalent intersections between race and Regionalism, this symposium endeavors to uncover new and perhaps unexpected answers about who is represented and representing in the heartland.