Wanda M. Corn: The Couple with the Pitchfork Book release presentation + book signing

November 18, 6 – 7:30 p.m. in the Sioux City Art Center Lecture Hall, art historian Wanda M Corn will give a presentation on her new book, The Couple with Pitchfork: American Gothic from Easel to Icon.

We are thrilled to welcome renowned Grant Wood expert Wanda M. Corn to Sioux City. Her newest book, The Couple with the Pitchfork: American Gothic from Easel to Icon is the capstone of her long career. An historian of American art and culture, she draws upon five decades of research and her vast personal collection of American Gothic ephemera. The first half of her book tells the story behind the creation of the painting, its purchase by the Art Institute of Chicago, and the many ways intellectuals and the public responded to it during Grant Wood’s lifetime (1891-1942). In the second half, Corn tracks the couple’s emergence as an icon in the 1960s, closely surveying the innumerable versions of the couple created by pop artists and commercial designers, political cartoonists and grassroot reenactors.

This event is presented in conjunction with the Art Center’s current exhibition, Pasture to Present: Grant Wood’s Corn Room and New Visions of Rural America. Pasture to Present offers a rare opportunity to see Grant Wood’s Corn Room mural not just as a celebrated piece of art but as a symbol of a rural ideal that continues to shape American identity. In pairing Wood’s original work with contemporary reflections on rural life, this exhibition honors the artist’s legacy while inviting a new generation to consider the ongoing importance of rural America in the nation’s cultural landscape. Pasture to Present: Grant Wood’s Corn Room and New Visions of Rural America will be in view until December 6.

Wanda Corn is the Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor Emerita in Art History at Stanford University and has been the recipient of numerous awards for her teaching and scholarship.