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Veterans Memorial Commission Museum unveils original Grant Wood drawings of Memorial Window in Cedar Rapids for new documentary
Assembly marks third time drawings have been seen in 98 years
Jan. 9, 2026 5:30 am, Updated: Jan. 9, 2026 6:55 pm
University of Northern Iowa art education major Anissa Droessler (left) and museum manager Teri Van Dorston are seen on a video monitor from a crane camera while they position a panel of Grant Wood’s original blueprint for the stained glass Memorial Window on the floor of the coliseum of the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. The drawing, consisting of 58 panels, has only been assembled twice: once at a Quaker Oats recreation room in 1928, and another in 2010 at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. (Jim Slosiarek/ The Gazette)
Museum manager Teri Van Dorston carefully aligns fragments of a panel of the Grant Wood’s original blueprint for the stained glass Memorial Window at the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. The drawing, consisting of 58 panels, has only been assembled twice: once at a Quaker Oats recreation room in 1928, and another in 2010 at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. (Jim Slosiarek/ The Gazette)
Clockwise from left: UNI art education major Anissa Droessler, Coe anthropology major Zane Becker-Byrd and museum manager Teri Van Dorston position a panel of Grant Wood’s original blueprint for the stained glass Memorial Window on the floor of the coliseum of the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. The drawing, consisting of 58 panels, has only been assembled twice: once at a Quaker Oats recreation room in 1928, and another in 2010 at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. (Jim Slosiarek/ The Gazette)
Museum manager Teri Van Dorston (left) works with UNI art education major Anissa Droessler to carry one of the 58 panels of the Grant Wood’s original blueprint for the stained glass Memorial Window to the floor of the coliseum at the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. The drawing, consisting of 58 panels, has only been assembled twice: once at a Quaker Oats recreation room in 1928, and another in 2010 at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. (Jim Slosiarek/ The Gazette)
Fragments from the fragile blueprint of Grant Wood’s Memorial Window stained-glass project are seen as workers assemble the 58-panel drawing on the floor of the coliseum of the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. The drawing, consisting of 58 panels, has only been assembled twice: once at a Quaker Oats recreation room in 1928, and another in 2010 at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. (Jim Slosiarek/ The Gazette)
From left: Coe anthropology major Zane Becker-Byrd, museum manager Teri Van Dorston and UNI art education major Anissa Droessler remove the final panel that make up Grant Wood’s original blueprint for the stained glass Memorial Window before carrying it to the floor of the coliseum of the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. The drawing, consisting of 58 panels, has only been assembled twice: once at a Quaker Oats recreation room in 1928, and another in 2010 at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. (Jim Slosiarek/ The Gazette)
Marie Wilkes (left) smiles at museum manager Teri Van Dorston as she looks at the overhead view captured by a crane-mounted camera operated by Eric Dean Freese on the floor of the coliseum of the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. The drawing, consisting of 58 panels, has only been assembled twice: once at a Quaker Oats recreation room in 1928, and another in 2010 at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. (Jim Slosiarek/ The Gazette)
Kevin Kelley at New Mile Media Arts in Iowa City, Iowa, records while workers assemble panels to a blueprint of Grant Wood’s Memorial Window stained-glass project onto the floor of the coliseum of the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. The drawing, consisting of 58 panels, has only been assembled twice: once at a Quaker Oats recreation room in 1928, and another in 2010 at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. (Jim Slosiarek/ The Gazette)
Grant Wood’s original blueprint for the stained glass Memorial Window is seen as 58 panels are assembled on the floor of the coliseum of the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. The drawing, consisting of 58 panels, has only been assembled twice: once at a Quaker Oats recreation room in 1928, and another in 2010 at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. (Jim Slosiarek/ The Gazette)
Colored-in sections of Grant Wood’s original blueprint for the stained glass Memorial Window is seen as 58 panels are assembled on the floor of the coliseum of the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday, January 6, 2026. The drawing, consisting of 58 panels, has only been assembled twice: once at a Quaker Oats recreation room in 1928, and another in 2010 at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. (Jim Slosiarek/ The Gazette)
Clockwise from left: museum manager Teri Van Dorston, Coe anthropology major Zane Becker-Byrd and UNI art education major Anissa Droessler remove the final panel that make up Grant Wood’s original blueprint for the stained glass Memorial Window before carrying it to the floor of the coliseum of the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday, January 6, 2026. The drawing, consisting of 58 panels, has only been assembled twice: once at a Quaker Oats recreation room in 1928, and another in 2010 at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. (Jim Slosiarek/ The Gazette)
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CEDAR RAPIDS — One of Grant Wood’s most pivotal periods as an artist is shedding new light on one of his greatest treasures in Cedar Rapids.
Since 1928, the world famous artist’s stained glass Memorial Window has awed visitors in one of Cedar Rapids’ most visible architectural landmarks on the Second Avenue Bridge. But until now, the sketches behind them — blueprints drawn by Wood’s own hands — have only been seen twice since they were drawn.
First in 1928 at the rec room in Quaker Oats — the largest room Wood could find to tack up the one-to-one scale drawings for the 24 by 20-foot window. Second in 2010 at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.
On Jan. 6, the fragile drawings, once haphazardly stored in the rafters of a bomb shelter, were assembled for the third time as a puzzle first designed by the artist 98 years ago.
But this time, a New Mile Media Arts documentary plans to share them in detail with the world through a new film that explores Wood before he was world famous.
Discovered anew after being forgotten
For nearly half of their life, the drawings for the Memorial Window were stored in less than ideal conditions. In the early 1970s, a custodian at the Veterans Memorial Building found them stored around some steam pipes in a bomb shelter.
“My theory is a well-meaning person put them in the bomb shelter during that time to save them. Then they were forgotten,” said Teri Van Dorston, museum manager for the Veterans Memorial Museum Commission.
The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art accepted them on a permanent loan to give them a secure home. In 2010, Van Dorston assembled them for the first time since the Memorial Window was installed.
“Steam stained them. Water pooled up. One of them looks like it has mud or clay smudges. They took a beating,” she said. “It’s still amazing we have them at all, because these are working drawings.”
Her assembly of the puzzle is the first time the drawings have been seen in their entirety since they were returned to the Veterans Memorial Building in 2020. Over the last century, only two of the original 58 drawings were lost entirely.
“It’s not behind glass, it’s right there. To see all these drawings laid out was just astounding, I couldn’t believe it,” said Kevin Kelley, director of the upcoming film with the working title “Grant Wood’s Window.”
“Your arm hairs stand up,” said Marie Wilkes, producer of the documentary.
With two students, Van Dorston transported each part from storage to the ballroom on the building’s first floor and pieced the tattered edges together, ever so slowly.
“There was such a meditative respect for what was going on. It was zen-like, to have people that still and focused for that long on this minutia of movement,” Wilkes said.
Prompted to reassemble them by the new documentary, Van Dorston hopes their third exposure — an arduous labor of love to assemble and disassemble — will jump start new conservation efforts for the drawings that have come to define a building she’s passionate about.
She also hopes the film’s detailed macro photography can help stained glass conservators restore certain pieces of the window. Before the Memorial Window had a protective exterior wall, vandals caused significant damage to it with BB guns, and the replacements are noticeably off to those someone intimately familiar with the window.
“To put this out to our community and nationwide has been very appealing to me. This is his largest piece, and people will drive by every day and not know it’s here,” she said. “To let this shine for the nation and world is an incredible opportunity.”
A pivotal comeback
Two years before “American Gothic,” the painting that would make Wood world famous, the Memorial Window the artist was commissioned for fell flat.
Just 10 years after the end of World War I, Wood enlisted German artists from the St. Louis-based Emil Frei Art Glass’ overflow branch in Munich to bring the 16-foot tall “Lady of Peace” to life over representatives of each military branch.
“That didn’t go over well with the community. There were a lot of people whose sons had died at the hands of the Germans,” said Kelley, director of the new film from New Mile Media Arts. “The sad part of the story was there was no fanfare. There was a dedication and just a handful of people showed up.”
Despite that, Wood’s work with German and Flemish artists during his trip to Munich would influence a change in style that made his later works pop.
Before the Memorial Window, Wood’s work as a junior high art teacher at McKinley Middle School gave him the stability to take trips to cities like Paris to study impressionism and post-impressionism art.
“Before, he was painting like everybody else — impressionistic paintings,” Kelley said. “He got this notion to incorporate this German and Flemish influence from his trip to Munich.”
Munich taught him something that would transform his work into the regionalism style he became famous for.
“Grant Wood had some dark periods and horrible challenges,” Kelley said. “I think he was just going to hang it up after the window.”
“But he got his revenge, artistically,” Wilkes said.
Documenting the impact
New Mile Media Art’s third film, funded by a $49,000 grant from the Iowa Economic Development Authority and Iowa Arts Council, was inspired by Kelley’s reading of Barbara Feller’s “Grant Wood’s Memorial Masterpiece” and is comprised of voices almost entirely from Iowa.
Wilkes and Kelley say it’s the first documentary of its kind to comprehensively cover this period of Grant’s life and artistry. They plan to finish a rough cut of the film this year and enter film festival circuits later this year or next year.
The public can keep an eye out for it on their website, newmilemediaarts.org.
“The public is going to get a chance to see their treasure. It’s theirs — the art is for the people,” Wilkes said.
Thanks to overhead camera work by Eric Dean Freese at Wired Production Group, art historians and Cedar Rapids residents alike can take in the drawings in detail and in their entirety.
“I’ve seen sketches from great artists before of famous paintings. They’re good, but they’re fairly loose — they’re not as intensely detailed (as Wood’s),” said Kelley. “To draw the window to scale before he (installed) it, that’s a true master. Even people who are doing huge murals wouldn’t do that.”
Van Dorston hopes others notice overlooked symbolism, particularly with the oak leaf at the bottom of the window that serves a dual purpose in a nod to military service and the tree landscape of Iowa. She was fascinated, in particular, by before and after glimpses that illustrate Wood’s process in revising the arch around the window.
“He’s giving a nod to our military service members saying, subtly, that these soldiers and all our service people do things of valor every day,” she said. “When they’re done, it makes them veterans, yet that valor still remains.”
Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.
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