CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Decades after artist Grant Wood’s 24-by-20-foot stained glass Memorial Window was installed in the Veterans Memorial Building, a custodian made a remarkable discovery.
“These were found stuffed above the steam pipes,” said Teri Van Dorston, museum manager for the Veterans Memorial Building & Commission, pointing to full-scale original drawings the renowned artist drew to create the celebrated window.
Those drawings, stored since the custodian’s discovery at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art from 1970 to 2020 and then back to their home in the Veterans Memorial Building, were taken out of storage and reassembled on Jan. 6, 2026, to serve as the centerpiece of a new documentary.
“Grant Wood’s Window” produced by Iowa City-based New Mile Media Arts, will shine a spotlight on the incredible work of art that Wood designed, said filmmaker Kevin Kelley.
Documentary filmmaker Kevin Kelley records the Grant Wood drawings being reassembled by Teri Van Dorston and her assistants at the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids. (photo/Cindy Hadish)
Kelley, who has also directed documentaries on Jackson Pollock’s “Mural” and other artists, said he was unaware of Wood’s Memorial Window until he saw Barbara Feller’s book, “Memorial Masterpiece,” at Prairie Lights bookstore in Iowa City, which traces the creation of the breathtaking stained glass window.
“I knew there was a compelling story to tell,” Kelley said, adding that seeing the detailed original drawings “gave us goosebumps. These aren’t just sketches, these are like a work of art in themselves. “
“To really see it all out here, it’s like an artistic jigsaw puzzle,” he said.
True to the puzzle analogy, art handlers Anissa Droessler, a student at the University of Northern Iowa, and Coe College student, Zane Becker-Byrd, helped Van Dorston assemble the 56 drawing pieces on archival paper taped to the floor of the coliseum.
In stocking feet and gloved hands, the three carefully removed the fragile pieces from two flat boxes and placed them on the floor to form the full-sized window model.
Van Dorston said Wood used a strong type of butcher paper to draw each full-scale piece, which was used as a working model in a recreation room at Quaker Oats, the tallest space he could find at the time.
Artist Grant Wood used a strong type of butcher’s paper for the original drawings. (photo/Cindy Hadish)
Wood and his assistant Arnold Pyle tacked up the drawings on the high walls of the room at the Quaker Oats plant, in final preparation of constructing his stained-glass masterpiece, Van Dorston noted.
He was commissioned for the project by the Veterans Memorial Commission in 1928 while he was an art teacher in Cedar Rapids, shortly before he began work on his now famous “American Gothic” painting.
The window pays tribute to the memory of veterans of the six wars Americans had fought to that time, with Wood’s sister, Nan Wood Graham — also Wood’s model in “American Gothic” — serving as the model for the central figure, said to represent the Lady of Peace.
Recreating the window model took nearly a full day, with Eric Dean Freese, of Wired Production Group, serving as cinematographer with both a crane camera system and a drone flown nearly to the ceiling of the coliseum.
Kelley said depending on financing, a rough cut of the documentary should be done by this summer, with a final version ready by fall. Partial funding was provided by the Iowa Arts Council, under the Iowa Economic Development Authority.
New Mile Media Arts Producer Marie Wilkes said the goal is to have the documentary shown at art museums, film festivals and hopefully, public television.
“Our endeavor is to get our work to Iowans first,” she said, “because it’s Iowa-centric, but it’s also nationally and internationally important. We think history is incredibly important and shouldn’t be ignored.”
More: See how a historian is documenting the last WWII veterans and more from the coliseum, below:
This article was so interesting and informative. Finding these drawings and the staff that put them together is quite an achievement.
The Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway is very excited that a documentary is being filmed on this! Grant Wood is such an important figure in honoring the history of Iowa. This amazing and beautiful work of art honoring Veterans is one of his most important works that many Iowans are unaware of.