116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Time Machine: Grant Wood in unusual places
Old University of Iowa swimming pool, operating theater became classrooms
The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
In 1934, Grant Wood was the Iowa director of the Civil Works Administration, a New Deal program during the Great Depression.
Wood’s first project in January was supervising 14 selected artists who were creating murals for the Iowa State College library at Ames.
Wood needed a space large enough for the painters to work on murals. He found a perfect place in an empty swimming pool in the University of Iowa’s former men’s gymnasium.
The project’s eight panels — 6 feet wide and 17 feet high — depicted the past and present of Iowa agriculture.
“One doesn’t think of a swimming pool as a studio,” Wood said with a laugh during a Des Moines Register interview, “but this pool actually makes an excellent studio. I am grateful to the university for furnishing us with such a splendid room for the project.”
Chicago, Stone City, Des Moines
In April, Wood was in his Iowa City workshop, working on four large lunettes (semicircular windows) for the Des Moines Public Library.
He spent the summer in Stone City, overseeing his art colony.
In October, the Art Institute of Chicago’s successful exhibition at the World’s Fair was ending.
“More visitors have been attracted to the room holding his (Wood’s) three paintings, ‘Daughters of Revolution,’ ‘American Gothic,’ and ‘Paul Revere’s Ride,’ than to any other,” The Gazette reported. “Also, more photographic reproductions of Wood’s paintings have been sold by the museum than of any other artist.”
‘Clinic’ art classes
The following month, on Nov. 17, Wood, as a member of the University of Iowa faculty, began a series of art classes, again in an unusual setting.
This time, he took over a former operating theater on the fourth floor of East Hall. The location, last used for medical purposes in 1929, inspired him to call the sessions “clinics.”
“Tiers of seats rise abruptly on three sides of the oval center, where the paintings will be placed,” The Gazette said. “Each painting is to be placed on an easel, and Mr. Wood will discuss it before assembled artists.”
Wood didn’t charge any artist who wanted to show Wood his or her work for criticism.
The clinic was repeated Dec. 1 and 15. Additional clinics were held twice a month until June 1935. Wood said his reason for the clinics was to attract new art talent to Iowa and as well as surrounding states.
According to The Gazette, “He plans to discuss informally any painting presented to him whether by a professional or novice artist, limiting his criticism to that of a practical nature in an attempt to aid those working alone. … The project, believed to be unique in the United States, is an outgrowth of the work done at the Stone City art colony.”
The Iowa City Press-Citizen reported on the first clinic: “To help those seeking his advice from the ‘slavery of things as they are’ is the purpose for which Prof. Grant Wood has established his free clinic of art.”
‘Creative way of working’
More than 60 artists from Iowa and other states participated in the first clinic.
“The big trouble with most artists,” Wood told them, “is their idea that you can go to nature and copy what you find as it is. Only by sheer accident will a work of art be produced by this process. Taking nature and juggling it is the creative way of working.”
He went on to explain line relationships. He thought good art was a balance between curves and angles. He suggested artists begin by dividing their work into sections as a guide to “mapping” a picture.
After the first clinic, on Nov. 25, Wood put together an exhibition in Cedar Rapids’ Carnegie Public Library showing his color sketches of the Iowa State murals and photos showing the murals’ progress.
Wood repeated his clinics at the UI again in 1935.
Surgical amphitheater
The surgical amphitheater on the University of Iowa campus was used 1898 to 1929, when University Hospitals moved into a new hospital west of the Iowa River.
The building was renamed East Hall in 1928, then Seashore Hall in 1981.
Seashore’s southwest wing came down in 2001. The southeast wing followed in 2016. The rest was razed in 2020.
Clinics expand
In 1936, Wood collaborated with UI professor Lester D. Longman to present a new series at the UI on alternate Saturdays during the academic year.
Artists in mediums other than paint were welcomed.
His 1937 art clinics started April 24 in the mural studio of the fine arts building.
“At first, these clinics were devoted wholly to giving specific technical suggestions to painters,” Wood said, “but we found that there was a growing interest in them among non-painters. So this year, the scope of our program is being enlarged to appeal to laymen interested in the appreciation of art as well as painters seeking technical criticism.”
Wood’s last work was “Family Doctor,” a lithograph of the hands of his friend Dr. A.W. Bennett of Iowa City, completed Nov. 19, just before Wood entered the hospital that same day. Wood died of pancreatic cancer at university hospital Feb. 12, 1942, one day before his 51st birthday.
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