“I’d lived in African American culture my whole life. In Iowa City, I suddenly was living among white people, but I still couldn’t do things like live in the dorms.” –Elizabeth Catlett, as quoted in Arts & Sciences magazine

In 1934, the self-proclaimed “farmer painter,” Grant Wood—whose iconic image of a pitchfork-wielding farmer and his dour companion, “American Gothic,” had brought him national fame four years earlier—assumed a new title: Professor Wood. Applauding the artist’s arrival at the University of Iowa, The Des Moines Register announced, “It is gladdening that Mr. Wood is not without honor in his own land.”