Grant Wood's Iowa studio to open - Front Page - Cedar Rapids Art Museum - Brief Article

Art in America, Jan, 2004 by Sue Taylor

The Cedar Rapids Art Museum recently acquired the historic home and studio of Grant Wood (1891-1942), located several blocks from the museum

in downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The modest redbrick building originally sewed as a carriage house for the 19th-century Douglas mansion, which became the Turner Mortuary in 1924. Wood's friend and patron, funeral director David Turner, gave the artist the carriage-house hayloft rent-free from 1924 until 1934, when Wood moved to Iowa City to teach at the University of Iowa, Celebrated in Wood lore for its inventive use of space, the 1,400-square-foot, second-floor loft was redesigned by the artist and features rollaway beds, drop tables and hideaway painting racks, as well as a tiny kitchen, a bath with sunken tub and a semiprivate bedroom for the artist's mother.

Wood painted American Gothic (1930) and other major works in this studio, and offered the space for plays staged by Theatre Cedar Rapids. He envisioned a community arts district around this studio-headquarters, soon known affectionately as 5 Turner Alley. Wood's status as Cedar Rapids's favorite son ensured that the space was preserved after his departure. Both carriage house and mansion entered the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. Cedar Memorial Funeral Homes, Inc., which acquired the property in 1978, donated it to the art museum in December 2002, encouraged by two of the company's owners, Audrey Linge and her son John, prominent cultural benefactors in Cedar Rapids. With a visitors' center planned for the ground floor, the museum, which owns some 200 works by Wood, will open the studio-loft to the public later this year. In fall 2005, the museum will present a major retrospective, including American Gothic, which the Art Institute of Chicago has, most unusually, agreed to lend.