Grant Wood's American Gothic caused a stir in 1930 when it was exhibited for the first time at the Art Institute of Chicago and awarded a prize of 300 dollars. Newspapers across the country carried the story, and the painting of a farmer and a younger woman posed before a white house brought the artist instant fame. In 1930, Grant Wood, an American painter with European training, noticed a small white house built in the small southern Iowa town of Eldon. Wood was so fascinated by it that he decided to paint the house along with the kind of people he thought should live in that house. In the painting, the farmer is modeled on his dentist. Dr. Byron McKeeby. His younger sister Nan served as a model for the woman (imagined to be the farmer's wife or daughter). Wood wanted to give a description of the traditional roles of men and women as the man is holding a pitchfork symbolizing hard labor. Each element was painted separately; the models sat separately and never stood in front of the house. The Gothic style of the house inspired the painting's title. American Gothic remains one of the most famous paintings in the history of American art. The painting has become part of American popular culture. Some believe that Wood used it to satirize  the narrow-mindedness that has been said to characterize Midwestern culture. The painting may also be read as a praise of the moral virtue or rural America or even as a mixture of praise and satire. American Gothic is one of the few images to reach the status of cultural symbol, along with Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Grant Wood chose the two models   _  .
to describe traditional roles of men and women to praise the moral virtue of rural America to make his dentist and his sister famous to carry the story across the country