parson weems is holding back the curtain on his own invented myth. compare it with charles wilson peal's self portrait, artist in his museum from 1822. in case you don't get the spoof, wood literally frames his composition around the imagery of charles wilson peal's famous 1822 portrait. peal is drawing the curtain bcke on history. like weems' story, it's an artificial fabrication. his specimens are a reality frozen in time. grant wood's washington is static and unchanging like the stuff birds on display. he's the same at 8 as he was at 64. grant wood's other famous image, daughters of revolution, not even daughters of the revolution, he wanted to show how stodgy blue-haired ladies like this can serve as the establishment against the kind of movement that gave birth to the united states in the first place. they are supposed to be the daughters of the american revolution, the dar. grant wanted to show by 1932 how much they had betrayed that legacy by becoming in turn an establishment against which people like grant wood would be happy to revolt. it's

would -- grant wood and his -- called parson weems' fable. that is the title i have for it. it is born of the colonial revival movement and part of the ancestral worship. the flipside of that is the bunking myth. -- building up historical characters through mythmaking and debunking myths is the other side of the coin. myths rely on notions. parody attacks the mythic images or icons. this is the iconographic history of washington. what can i say about this? the most notice -- noticeable thing about it is it is the headitous gilbert stuart painted when washington was 64 on the bottle of an eight-year-old cutting down his father's tree. weems, and early biographer who propagated the story from his childhood is holding back the curtain, on his own invented myth. compare that to charles wilson peale's portrait. in case you don't get the spoof, wood literally framed this composition around the famous portrait. peale is drawing the curtain back on a package reality with specimens are neatly packed in cubicles. this is the natural history museum in philadelphia. peale's famous natur