Bluffs to restore 2nd Wood's mural

COUNCIL BLUFFS — The Bluffs Arts Council is campaigning to raise money to collect and conserve as many of the remaining fragments of the so-called Corn Room mural, which famed Iowa artist Grant Wood painted in Council Bluffs' Chieftain Hotel in 1927.

Council President Dick Miller said the organization has identified 25 fragments of the Chieftain's Corn Room mural. Fifteen of those segments were actually the property of — and were auctioned off by — the Bluffs Arts Council in 1987.

Ward L. Bean, who served as president of the arts council during its infancy, said the council had just completed one of its first major projects, the restoration and preservation of the Grant Wood “Early Days of Kanesville” mural that is now on display in Looft Hall on the Iowa Western Community College campus in Council Bluffs.

Bean said that shortly after completion of the art council's effort to restore that mural, Myron Allerton, a local pharmacist and historian, was cleaning out his attic and found 15 fragments of the Chieftain's Corn Room mural that he had collected when the hotel was renovated.

Allerton donated the fragments to the arts council.

“We had a lot of discussion,” Bean said. “We knew the remnants were valuable, and we knew that they should be preserved,” but the arts council did not have the money needed to pay for the restoration.

Bean said the goal of the two auctions was to put the remnants into the hands of individuals who would preserve them — and maybe restore them.

Combined, the two auctions raised about $13,000.

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