Arts and letters united.

Great works of literature have inspired artists for centuries. These collaborations, beginning with the anonymous manuscript illuminators of the Middle Ages, embody the merging of two creative minds. A case in point is the pairing of Sinclair Lewis and Grant Wood. In 1920 Lewis published his remarkable satire of rural life in the fictional Midwestern town of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, which he entitled Main Street. In it, he created two disparate groups of people: the worldly but unhappy professionals who inhabit Main Street, and the immigrant and native-born blue-collar workers who live more fulfilling lives in the slums on the other side of town. In 1935 George Macy, the owner of the Limited Editions Club in New York City, wrote to Lewis seeking his permission to publish a limited edition of fifteen hundred copies of the novel with illustrations by the regional artist Grant Wood. Wood had recently exhibited his now legendary painting American Gothic (1930) at the Art Institute of Chicago to great acclaim. Lewis was delighted by the idea and agreed to write a new introduction for this edition. In addition to supplying nine large illustrations Wood helped choose the paper and select the linen used for the book's binding. The volume was issued in 1937.

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An exhibition that gathers the nine original drawings for Main Street along with a few other works by Wood and a Limited Editions Club copy of the book is on view through August 6 at the Brunnier Art Museum of Iowa State University in Ames. Entitled Grant Wood's Main Street, it is the first exhibition to assemble all nine drawings, which are now in private and public collections across the United States, since their creation.

Wood made the drawings (variously executed ...