When the Davenport Museum of Art (now the Figge Art Museum) held a Grant Wood exhibition titled Grant Wood: An American Master Revealed, art teacher sister Gloria rounded up Mom and me for a road trip. Davenport is on the “east coast of Iowa,” along the Mississippi River and the largest of the Quad Cities. 

It was held from March to early September in 1996. The Chicago Museum of Art had loaned American Gothic for the show until June 10, so we attended on my June 4 birthday so Mom could see it in person. (Gloria had seen it in Chicago while an art student, and we had taken Dan to see it when he was a kid) Several other originals were there as well, including Young Corn, Fall Plowing, Stone City, Appraisal, but also our favorite Dinner for Threshers, loaned from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Mom was so taken with Dinner for Threshers that we bought a print of it and had it matted and framed for her birthday that year.

The kitchen shows there was no electricity on the farm. They cooked with an iron stove, which was heated with cobs or coal. Notice how the pipe fits into the chimney pipe. This would be a hot job in the summer or fall.

The sink is under the window, with a red hand pump at one end. The sink probably drained into a bucket which had to be emptied outside somewhere, through the screen door and probably to the garden.

After retirement years later, Gloria moved in with Mom “until she decided where she wanted to live,” but soon realized that Mom couldn’t stay out there alone. Gloria loves the farm so she settled in, making it possible for Mom to stay there as long as she could.

The men tidy up on the porch. All in bib overalls, none wears a cap indoors. A piano bench seats one man. The farmer’s wife may be talking to someone in the back, while a neighbor or daughter brings in more mashed potatoes, to be served family style.

They don’t have electricity, so the hanging lamp is one with a wick. The bump out in the upper left is the chimney. During the winter, a pot-bellied stove would sit below it with a stovepipe reaching into the round chimney pipe, which is covered the rest of the year.

A windmill peeks from behind the barn, with a haymow door under the peak. The men tidy up before dinner. You can tell it’s noon because of the shadows under the Leghorn chickens.

Dinner for Threshers hangs in the same kitchen, since Gloria still lives on the farm.

Here’s an earlier post about Iowa’s Grant Wood.

My 1996 diary also says that “on our way home,” we toured the Herbert Hoover Museum and Birthplace at West Branch, the only U.S. President born in Iowa.

We also stopped in Iowa City to see son Dan who had just started summer school at the University of Iowa, along with a job at the university business library. Then we three ladies visited some of the Amana Colonies.

What a memorable mother-daughters road trip!