A nearly century-old Grant Wood painting at the Sioux City Arts Center has been sent to Minneapolis for a year-long conservation process.
The seven-panel mural, titled Corn Room, was originally painted in 1926 for the historical Martin Hotel before it was lost for decades under paint and old wallpaper. It was rediscovered with severe damage in 1979.
While there's very little that can be done to restore the original painting to how it was, Arts Center Curator Christopher Atkins says conservation can prevent further damage.
"A lot was lost underneath the layers of paint and damage that was done to the mural, so the best the [conservators] can do is conserve it, to make sure that it's stabilized," he said.
He says a conservator from the Midwest Art Conservation Center in Minnesota found that sections of the original paint were lifting from the panels in a process called "delamination."
“There were a couple of things they wanted to do to make the colors come out a little bit more, reverse some of the things that were done more than 40 years ago," he said. "Some of the paint is coming off of the surface of the substrate or where the paintings are installed. So they want to make sure that those go down and they're flat again, just so that nothing peels and nothing cracks, nothing flakes off."
The museum states that, when seen in the context of the other works in the exhibition by The American Gothic painter, Corn Room shows how Wood matured as an artist, "developing the style that brought him national and international recognition."
The mural panels will return to the center in 2026.
