What's Happening in Davenport, IA…

The Figge Art Museum in Davenport has recovered a sketchbook that belonged to artist Grant Wood, who painted the world-famous work ‘American Gothic’. The book, which dates from 1929, had been missing for approximately 50 years.

The sketchbook, which Wood had signed, comprises 100 pages of drawings of his designs for a now famous stained-glass window, 24 feet high, in the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids. Wood and his assistant, Arnold Pyle, spent two years creating the window, the first commission of this size Wood had undertaken.

Andrew Wallace, of the Figge Art Museum, said it is likely the book was stolen in 1966, during an open house at the museum, which was then known as the Davenport Museum of Art. Over 240 pieces of Wood's belongings and artworks are now in the Figge, which did not discover the sketchbook was gone until 1979.

Wallace would not reveal whether the Figge paid for the return of the book. In 2013, the museum withdrew the book from an auction in Chicago, where experts believed it could sell for as much as $60,000. In 1975, New York City's Kennedy Galleries sold the sketchbook to its most recent owner for $500. The museum plans to digitize the pages of the book and post them on its website.

The Figge could work with a poster printing company to create a display placard celebrating the return of the sketchbook.