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Grant Wood's most famous work is 'American Gothic' (1930), Courtesy Art Institute of Chicago.

Iowa arts group hopes to reassemble Grant Wood mural

Catherine Saunders-Watson
Catherine Saunders-Watson
Grant Wood's most famous work is 'American Gothic' (1930), Courtesy Art Institute of Chicago.
Grant Wood’s most famous work is ‘American Gothic’ (1930), Courtesy Art Institute of Chicago.

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) – An arts group is hoping to raise $120,000 to buy the remnants of a mural painted on a Council Bluffs hotel wall by Grant Wood in 1927.

The Council Bluffs Arts Council is hoping to put back together a Wood mural that was cut to pieces nearly four decades ago.

In the 1920s, a hotel magnate commissioned Wood to paint murals in three Iowa hotels. The paintings enveloped rooms in sunny landscapes.

Wood’s murals from the hotels in Sioux City and Cedar Rapids ended up in the Sioux City Art Center and the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. But in 1970, owners of the Bluff Towers in Council Bluffs invited the public to cut away parts of their Wood mural and take them home.

Now the Arts Council is trying to track those pieces down and put them back together.
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Information from: the Des Moines Register,
www.desmoinesregister.com

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AP-CS-07-13-09 0401EDT