Grant Wood Scholar to Talk about the Man behind the Artist
Join us at the Figge Art Museum Thursday November 4th at 7 PM for a lecture and reading by R. Tripp Evans, author of Grant Wood: A Life. Ever since Wood's now-iconic American Gothic caught the nation's attention in 1930, his work has become a blank canvas for audiences?who see what they will in his dream-like landscapes, unconventional history paintings, and forbidding portraits, with little sense of the man who created these images. In his lecture, Evans will discuss some of the sources for Wood's powerful imagery?including a number of important examples from the Figge Museum's extensive collection?and will examine Wood's public image as an uncomplicated "farmer-painter," a persona that has often obscured the far more interesting dimensions of Wood's life; his sexuality, artistic identity and relationship with his family.
R. Tripp Evans, PhD is Professor of Art History at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. He is the author of Romancing the Maya: Mexican Antiquity in the American Imagination, 1820-1915 (2004). He received his doctoral degree in the history of art from Yale University and has served as a visiting lecturer at Yale, Wellesley College, and Brown University.
Evans will be signing books in the store prior to his lecture; beginning at 5:30 pm. Copies are currently on sale in the Museum Store. Admission to the museum and lecture is $7. Admission is free to members, college professors and students. The Figge Arts Café and Bar will be open before and after the lecture.
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