Grant Wood and the American Farm at Reynolda House, Fall 2016.

This month, we're celebrating the birthday of the seminal American artist Grant Wood. Grant lived most of his life in eastern Iowa, and with his mother, Hattie. His sister Nan, with whom he was very close, lived with Grant and their mother until her marriage and posed for her brother on numerous occasions, most notably in  American Gothic (1930) .

Reynolda's own Wood painting, Spring Turning , was featured in the February 8, 1937 issue of LIFE magazine as a sizeable spread. On Wood's verdant landscape, the magazine wrote: "Wood's latest and greatest landscape was finished last September after eighteen months' work. Methodical and painstaking, Wood first built a clay model for depth and scale, meticulously dotted the picture with milk weeds, and painted mathematically precise fence posts."

Grant Wood's Spring Turning (1936), on view in the historic house library, 2017.

One visitor's story of a farm after seeing the exhibition Grant Wood and the American Farm .

Spring Turning recently underwent necessary conservation and care. With a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, this masterpiece and others from our permanent collection, were conserved. Watch a short documentary on the behind-the-scenes restoration of "Spring Turning."

One of America's most beloved artists is also one of Reynolda's. In the fall of 2016, we welcomed visitors to the Museum to see the exhibition Grant Wood and the American Farm. We invited visitors to share their own stories of a farm and rural life, much like Grant Wood depicted in his paintings. Watch two of those stories and our call for stories in our YouTube playlist.

Just as Reynolda's Grant Wood has captivated audiences in Winston-Salem. It is among our most requested works of art to be loaned to other museums. Visitors to the Whitney Museum of American Art will see Reynolda's Wood painting in the exhibition Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables (March 2 — June 10, 2018).