Corn Palace featured in newly published book

• 'Corn Palaces and Butter Queens'

Grain palaces place in Midwestern culture examined.

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The Corn Palace is prominently featured in a new 272-page illustrated book titled “Corn Palaces and Butter Queens: A History of Crop Art and Dairy Sculpture,” published by the University of Minnesota Press.

The book was written by Pamela H. Simpson, a professor of art history at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. Simpson examines the crop and dairy art forms and their place in Midwestern history.

In the second chapter of the book, titled Cereal Architecture, Simpson describes how the corn palaces in Mitchell and Sioux City came to be. In the book’s seventh chapter, the Oscar Howe murals on the Corn Palace and his painting in the dome of the Carnegie Resource Center in Mitchell are explained in great detail.

Historical photos accompany text on nearly every other page of the book. Ninety-nine of the illustrations are black and white and 12 are color. The book is available in paperback for $29.95.

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