Hiding in Plain Sight - James Maroney Inc.

to keep house for him but that he was…just not interested in women.” 13 Seeming to know
something he preferred not to say plainly, Garwood resorts to innuendo: “There were
times when people thought Wood might marry but there were no sound reasons for these
expectations.” 14 All Wood’s biographers have noted these facts but never quite assembled
them as sufficient circumstantial proof from which to make a case for Wood’s sexual
preference. Taken together or separately, these descriptors do not constitute proof of
anything but, in popular parlance anyway, are not these the classic, stereotypical
parameters of the “timid, deeply closeted homosexual?”
I, too, have long suspected Wood was gay. Thirty years ago, I point-blank asked Nan
Wood Graham, Wood’s sister, if it were so: came the answer no. 15 I personally asked
Park Rinard, Wood’s longtime roommate/secretary/archivist if he were gay; categorically
no. Both—Nan and Park—cited their marriages—that is, Grant’s and Park’s—as proof
against the allegation, a once conventional—now laughable—cover.
Nan, who posed for the sour-faced spinster-like daughter/wife wearing the calico shirtwaist
gazing off wistfully to one side in American Gothic, spent her life defending her
older brother and made a career of keeping a secret whatever it was she knew about his
true nature. Nan once reported to Wanda Corn that because they were unimportant, she
long ago burned her brother’s letters; clearly, what Nan burned in her brother’s
correspondence was some unsuitable truth. 16 After his death, on a claim of copyright to
which, incidentally, she was not entitled, she tirelessly struck back at those who produced
the ever-burgeoning parade of spoofs and lampoons on the iconic image. Relying upon
her legitimate rights as his sister and his sole heir, and upon her flimsy claim to
copyright, she was determined to defend his—and her—honor. She doth protest too
much; what Nan invariably saw as infringement was in fact parody, a protected form of
expression. Ultimately, Nan always settled out of court. In this way, her victims gave
Nan, if not an easy conscience, at least a modest living. She was by necessity litigious
and proud, by nature meek and pitiable. But until her death in 1990, she always managed
to keep the lid on this most pressing side issue of her brother’s sexuality. Since Nan’s
death, and with no champion, so to speak, left standing in the field, sexual ambiguity is
gaining a foothold in modern interpretations of American Gothic. And, while art
historians had not previously shown much appetite for making an issue of it, it seems that
sexual ambiguity has also attached itself to its relatively unknown creator.
§
13
Darrell Garwood, Artist in Iowa: A Life of Grant Wood, (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1944) pp. 40,
75
14
Ibid, p. 73
15
In 1973 I appraised the John B. Turner collection of Grant Wood’s work, which Turner bequeathed to the
Cedar Rapids Art Museum. Shortly thereafter, I met Nan Wood Graham and Park Rinard.
16
See Appendix 2 for another reference to letters in Grant Wood’s apartment
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