After being displaced along with the rest of the UI Museum of Art in the 2008 floods, Grant Wood’s celebrated 1931 painting Plaid Sweater is back in town. For those of you unable to drop by its new home in the student union’s Richey Ballroom, it’s one of the nearly 10,000 items available for browsing in the Iowa Digital Library’s University of Iowa Museum of Art Digital Collection. While you’re there, you can also check out the original plaid sweater worn in the painting — slightly disguised, since the sleeves were subsequently shortened to allow use in warmer weather.

“Plaid Sweater is a portrait of Mel Blumberg of Clinton, Iowa. According to Wood’s sister, Nan, he was to paint the boy, but did not want him to be wearing his ‘Sunday Best’ for the portrait. He was discussing the matter when the subject burst into the room wearing the plaid sweater and carrying a football. Grant Wood thought this was the perfect way to represent the football player; the portrait was not to be staged, and Wood shows the boy as a heroic archetype of the ‘All-American Boy.’ Wood portrays this youth as a healthy symbol of the future and a natural extension of his environment.” — http://uima.uiowa.edu/grant-wood/