The Grant Wood exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York connects with history in ways I had not expected.

Wood, of course, is the iconic Iowa artist who painted “American Gothic” and other works during the 1930s.   

The Whitney exhibition “Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables” ran from March 3 through June 10, courtesy of benefactors that included Des Moines’ John and Mary Pappajohn.

It was the most complete collection of Wood’s work. The exhibition catalog contains more than 200 images retrieved from more than 40 institutions and individuals, including the Des Moines Art Center.   

The catalog traces Wood’s artistic influences, but if you want to know the artist, read R. Tripp Evans’ 2010 biography, “Grant Wood: A Life.”

One of my favorite Grant Wood stories involved “The Birthplace of Herbert Hoover,” a painting commissioned by Iowa Republicans in 1931 to celebrate the then-president’s birth in West Branch, Iowa.

The businessmen chose “Iowa’s best-known painter to glorify its most famous politician,” Evans wrote, and hoped “to present the work to Hoover himself.”

However, when the would-be benefactors saw the painting, “they perceived more satire than tribute.” The painting, Evans explained, can be seen as an allegory of how Hoover’s larger-than-life reputation overwhelmed his humble origins. His two-room birth cottage is barely visible behind a newer and much larger house that dominates the scene.

The Iowans thought Wood was making fun of their hero and refused to pay for the painting, which eventually found its way into the Des Moines Art Center’s collection.

Hoover’s birthplace was painted one year after “American Gothic,” which put Wood on the art map. 

Today, the male and female figures in “American Gothic” are as recognizable as Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” but in 1930, Wood claimed the painting was about architecture, not people. He is quoted in the exhibition catalog as explaining that many Iowa towns have “a house or church in American Gothic style. I simply invented some American Gothic people to stand in front of a house of this type.”

Wood is often identified as a folksy regionalist, whose idyllic portrayals of rolling landscapes captivated many, as did his depictions of rural life including “Arbor Day,” a 1932 painting that was chosen for this state’s image on the U.S. Mint’s 2004 Iowa quarter.

It wasn’t until 1983, more than 40 years after his death, that New York Times art critic Grace Glueck wrote that while Wood’s name was “still good for a snicker in respectable art circles … he turns out to be more a complex and interesting figure than expected.”

The exhibit catalog explained that many of “the subjects Wood painted are myths, not facts,” adding that because he frequently used satire, “what is depicted is not at all straightforward.”

One of my favorites is “Parson Weem’s Fable,” which Evans said contains many hidden meanings. The piece depicts Parson Mason Locke Weems, George Washington’s first biographer, pulling back a curtain to reveal a scene — created in the author’s imagination — of Washington’s father confronting a young George as he cuts down a cherry tree.

 The exhibit catalog helps connect us with Wood by noting that his career “began around the time of the stock market crash of 1929 and ended with his death shortly after the United States entered World War II.”

 “Then, as now,” it said, “the country was struggling economically and there was a strong popular sentiment against elitism as well as vigorous, sometimes bitter debate over the nature of the nation’s core identity. The difference, perhaps, is that neither Wood nor his art is what it seems.”