Review of Rethinking Regionalism: John Steuart Curry and the Kansas Mural Controversy and Grant Wood: A Study in American Art and Culture.

Authors

Richard W. Etulain, University of New Mexico

Date of this Version

1988

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly FALL 1988. Copyright 1998 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Abstract

In the first of these two volumes, M. Sue Kendall treats the cultural contexts that helped shape the paintings of John Steuart Curry and sparked reactions to his murals at the Kansas statehouse in Topeka. Emphasizing the details of Curry's life and how they interlocked with national, historical, and political happenings between 1937 and 1942, Kendall focuses particularly on the ideological and cultural attitudes that embroiled Curry, newspaper editors, and thousands of Kansans in the mural controversy.