The Grant Wood Art Colony presented the 5^th biennial symposium, Myth, Memories, and the Midwest: Grant Wood and Beyond. In honor of Grant Wood’s 125^th birthday, the Colony and its National Advisory Board planned a robust and engaging event.

The keynote, morning session, and afternoon session are available for viewing on YouTube. Please note that the Q&A from the morning session is not available due to poor audio quality.

Full-text papers will be archived and made available as they are submitted by the presenters to the Grant Wood Art Colony. Click on the presentation below to see if a full-text paper has been received.

Location

Art Building West
141 North Riverside Drive, Iowa City, Iowa 52246

Schedule

Click on each title below for an abstract and to learn more about each speaker.

Friday, October 28

7:30 p.m. Keynote Address: "Screwball Regionalism: Grant Wood and Humor During the Great Depression"
                 Erika Doss, University of Notre Dame

Saturday, October 29

9:00 a.m. Welcome

9:20 a.m. "Grant Wood and the After-Life of Victorian Architecture"
                  Kerry Dean Carso, State University of New York at New Paltz

10:00 a.m. "On Common Ground: Grant Wood and the photography of the Farm Security Administration"
                 James Swensen, Brigham Young University

10:40 a.m. "'Something of color and imagination': Grant Wood, Storytelling, and the Past's Appeal in Depression-Era America"
                 Annelise K. Madsen, Art Institute of Chicago

11:20 a.m. Q&A led by Wanda Corn

12:00-1:30 p.m. Break

1:30 p.m. "Grant Wood’s Regionalist Camouflage"
                 Jason Weems, University of California, Riverside

2:10 p.m. "In Springtime: Myth and Memory in Grant Wood's Last Paintings"
                 Sue Taylor, Portland State University

2:50 p.m. Q&A led by Joni Kinsey

Symposium recording

The Symposium culminated with a special viewing of the documentary 1142 at The Englert Theatre Saturday evening at 5:30 p.m. The documentary can be viewed on YouTube as well.

Support for the Grant Wood Symposium was provided by James Hayes, Kim and John Callaghan, and the Iowa Arts Council, a division of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The 6^th Biennial Grant Wood Symposium addressed the role art plays in community building, the responsibilities of the artist and the community, and more. This event recognized the interplay between publicly engaged artistic practice and current events. A proponent of public art, Grant Wood headed the Public Works of Art Program (PWAP), a part of the New Deal, in 1934. The University of Iowa Regionalist artist and native Iowan not only completed several murals that are still extant but encouraged other artists to create public art through his pedagogy and professional position. Given the complexity of effectively teaching students to produce artwork in the public sphere, this year also featured a special session targeted toward faculty members currently teaching or interested in teaching public art and/or engaged practice. The panels featured artists, scholars, attorneys, architects, and community planners from across the country. 

LOCATION

Art Building West
141 North Riverside Drive, Iowa City, Iowa 52246

SCHEDULE

Friday, September 28
Faculty/Instructor Session

2:00 p.m. Welcome

2:10 p.m. "Artist-Community Collaborative Murals"
          Betni Kalk

2:20 p.m. "On the Line and Community Engagement"
         Carrie Ida Edinger

2:30 p.m. "Within and Without: A Socially Engaged Art Practice Investigates the Invisible Worker, Poverty and Community Building"
          Jane Gilmor

2:40 p.m. "Learning in public: socially-engaged art and experimental education"
          Fereshteh Toosi

2:50-3:45 p.m. Panel discussion moderated by Loyce Arthur

Recording of faculty/instructor session

Saturday, September 29

9:00 a.m. Registration

9:30 a.m. Opening Remarks

Practicing Art in the Public Sphere

9:40 a.m. "Permission, Ownership, Copyright, and Preservation, and Sale of Public Art"
          David Bright

9:50 a.m. "Public Art, Private Funds"
          Scott Wallace & Lynn Verschoor

10:00 a.m. "How Saying No to YES became the Catalyst for Boulder's Public Art Program"
            Mandy Vink

10:10 a.m. Conversation/Q&A with Bright, Wallace, Verschoor, and Vink

Public Art in Action

10:50 a.m. "Codified Bodies: Tools to Measure Social Liberation and Inculcate Cultural Change"
            Jen Krava

11:10 a.m. "Against My Will: A Multigenerational Collaboration with Sexual Assault Survivors from Alfred University"
            Traci Molloy

11:30 a.m. Conversation/Q&A with Krava and Molloy

Recording of morning sessions

12:00 p.m. Lunch
The Feast by artist Sydney Pursel

Art Doesn't Happen Here

1:20 p.m. "Art as an Avenue to Promote Industry, Manufacturing, and Placemaking Amidst the Decline of America's Bread Basket, Rust Belt, and & Rural Communities"
            Michael LeClere

1:40 p.m. "Grit and Grind: Memphis Bred Me"
            Desmond Lewis

2:00 p.m. "Public Art Incubator: Fabricating Community Engagement Through Public Art"
            Dan Perry and Tom Stancliffe

2:20 p.m. Conversation/Q&A with LeClere, Lewis, Perry, and Stancliffe

3:00 p.m. Keynote with Rick Lowe

Lowe is a Houston-based artist and community organizer and 2014 MacArthur Fellow. Through his Project Row Houses, he reinvents community revitalization as an art form by transforming a long-neglected neighborhood in Houston into a visionary amalgam of arts venue, community support center, and historic preservation initiative.

4:00 p.m. Closing Remarks

Recording of afternoon session and keynote

Support for the Grant Wood Symposium was provided by James Hayes, the Iowa Arts Council, a division of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Grant Wood Art Colony hosted a compelling series of presentations investigating 20^th-21^st-century artists who, like Grant Wood, extended their practice to creating distinctive homes and studios. They explored how these environments reflect or shape an artist’s output and how they can be considered independent works in their own right. This three-day-long symposium considered the intersections of home, creativity, and identity. Our prototype was Grant Wood, who renovated a hayloft into a studio and home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and restored and furnished a significant mid-nineteenth-century historic home in Iowa City where he lived and worked.

A call for papers held in spring 2020 generated great interest and an excellent program of diverse scholars. Speakers presented new research about contemporary or historic figures who created unique homes and/or studios. 

Learn more about Grant Wood's Cedar Rapids studio, affectionately called "5 Turner Alley," by visiting the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art's website.

LOCATIONS

Art Building West
141 North Riverside Drive, Iowa City, Iowa 52246

Grant Wood's Studio
5 Turner Alley SE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52402

The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art
410 3rd Ave SE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52401

SCHEDULE

Click on the titles to learn more about the speakers and their research. Links to each session's recording can be found beneath each session description. Otherwise, recordings of the entire Symposium can be found by visiting this YouTube playlist.

Friday, April 8
240 Art Building West

3:00 p.m. Welcome

• Maura Pilcher, Director, Grant Wood Art Colony
• Nick Benson, Director, Office of Community Engagement
• Barbara Wilson, President, University of Iowa

3:40-5:30 p.m.
Keynote: Creativity on the Home Front

• Opening remarks by Wanda Corn
• Valerie Balint, "Yesterday and Tomorrow: Re-framing the Historic Artists' Homes and Studios Program"
• Joni Kinsey, “Grant Wood’s Studio-Homes: From Hayloft to Mansion, Overalls to Hollywood"

Keynote presentation recording 

(Note: Due to a technical difficulty, this session was recorded at a later date.)

6:30-8:00 p.m. Reception at Tomás Lasansky Studio

Saturday, April 9
240 Art Building West

9:30 a.m. Opening Remarks

Jim Hayes, President, Grant Wood Art Colony National Advisory Board

9:50-11:35 a.m. 
Session 1: The Art that is Life

Chair: Tripp Evans

• Olivia Armandroff, "Tiling a Life: Henry Chapman Mercer and His Fonthill Castle"
• Michael Clapper, "Living the Dream: Maxfield Parrish and The Oaks"
• Karen Zukowski, "The Past and Future of Henry Varnum Poor's Crow House"
  • Download the petition to save the Crow House.
• Q&A, moderated by Tripp Evans

Recording of Session 1: The Art that is Life

1:15-2:30 p.m.
Session 2: Visionaries

Chair: Jane Milosch

• Lisa Stone, "Home Based and Life-Specific: Artist-Built Environments"
• Zac Bleicher, "Edgar Miller's Handmade Homes and Studios of Interwar Chicago"
• Q&A, moderated by Jane Milosch

Recording of Session 2: Visionaries

2:45-4:10 p.m.
Session 3: Labors of Love

Chair: Lauren Lessing

• Sarah Rovang, "'Thinking on a Wall': Home, Space, and the Creative Practice of Georgia O'Keeffe"
• Daniel Belasco, "The Artist as Builder: Al Held's Barn Studio, 1965-2005"
• Q&A, moderated by Lauren Lessing

Recording of Session 3: Labors of Love

Sunday, April 10
Grant Wood's Studio and Cedar Rapids Museum of Art

11:00 a.m.
Grant Wood Studio House open for tours for symposium attendees

12:30-2:00 p.m.
Closing Plenary

Chair: Valerie Balint

• Sean Ulmer, “The Grant Wood Studio: A Space Transformed and Transformational”
• Victoria Munro, "Alice Austen House"
• Helen Harrison, "'The country is wonderful,' Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner in The Springs"
• Closing Remarks by Valerie Balint

Closing plenary recording

Support was provided by the Iowa Arts Council, a division of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs and Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

 

The Grant Wood Art Colony is hosting 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.

LOCATIONS

Seamans Center 1505 (Stanley Auditorium)
103 South Captiol Street
Public parking available in the Capitol Street Ramp (220 South Capitol Street)

Art Building West 116
141 North Riverside Drive, Iowa City, Iowa 52246

Stanley Museum of Art
160 West Burlington Street
Parking available on the museum's lower level

Schedule

Friday, April 25

Afternoon location: Seamans Center 1505

2:00 p.m. Welcome from Maura Pilcher, Director, Grant Wood Art Colony and Derek Nnuro, Curator of Special Projects, Stanley Museum of Art

2:30-3:30 p.m. 
Session 1: American Regionalism Beyond the Midwest

• Maya Harakawa, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Toronto
  "Benny Andrews and the Problem of Regionalism"
• Erika Schneider, Professor of Art History, Framingham State University
  "Inclusive Regionalism: Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller’s Water Boy"

3:30-5:00 p.m. 
Session 2: De Generación En Generación: Regionalism of South Texas Chicano/a Artists Across Three Generations

• Carey Rote, Professor, Art History, Pre-Columbian, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
  “Antonio E. García: South Texas Regionalist”
• Gina Palacios, Artist, Associate Professor, and Interim Director of the Center for Mexican American Studies, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
  “Frontera Regionalism: Art from the Borderlands”
• Liz Kim, Lecturer, Texas A&M University-Kingsville
  “Regionalist Views of Amado M. Peña’s Chicano Movement Posters”

Evening location: Art Building West 116

6:00 p.m. Film Screening & Artist Conversation

• Chris Harris
• Cameron Granger

Saturday, April 26

Morning location: Seamans Center 1505

9:00-9:15 a.m. Coffee

9:15 a.m. Welcome from Joni Kinsey, Grant Wood Art Colony National Advisory Board

9:30-11:00 a.m. 
Session 3: The Region Shapes the Nation: Place and Identity in the American Scene

• James Denison, Postdoctoral Fellow, Kalamazoo College and Kalamazoo Institute of Arts
  "Beyond Midwestern Realism: Racialized Regionalism in Comparative Perspective"
• David Ehrenpreis, Professor of Art History, James Madison University
  “'Savage Iowa:' Grant Wood’s Vision of Native America”
• Christopher Atkins, Curator, Sioux City Art Center
  "Reimagining Rural America: Grant Wood’s Corn Room"

11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. 
Session 4: Navigating Terrains: Race and Region Today

• Paolo Morales, Visiting Assistant Professor of Photography, Department of Art & Art History, Bucknell University
  "Memphis Tulips and Flowering Dogwood: Exploring Racialization of the Photograph through Encounters as an Asian-American"
• Christopher-Rasheem McMillan, Associate Professor of Dance Theory and Praxis and Gender, Women's & Sexuality Studies
  "Performing Christian Nationalism in the Midwest: Race, Ritual, and the Other"

12:30-2:00 p.m. Break

Afternoon location: Stanley Museum of Art

2:00-3:00 p.m. 
Refreshments and Exhibition Visit – it’s a fine thing

it’s a fine thing is generously supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Additional funding was provided by the Members Special Exhibition Fund and Dr. John J. Tanja.

3:00-4:15 p.m. Keynote
Katherine Simóne Reynolds, artist and curator

Symposium Planning Committee: Jacqueline Banigan, R. Tripp Evans, Ashley Howard, Derek Nnuro, and Maura Pilcher