CEDAR RAPIDS - Grant Wood. Pablo Picasso. Marc Chagall.

All hailed as brilliant artists, pieces of their work hang not far from here - at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.

"Because it's not as big of a city, people don't recognize (Cedar Rapids) as a cultural center," says Katie Mills, communications coordinator for the museum. "Right now we have a special exhibit where we have a print of Picasso and (Joan) Miro. It's neat to walk into a museum in Cedar Rapids and see that."

The museum has the world's largest collection of paintings by Grant Wood, the artist famous for "American Gothic" who lived and painted in Cedar Rapids. Also recently opened to the public is Grant Wood Studio, where the artist made his home from 1924 to 1934. Located around the corner from the museum, the studio will be preserved and restored. For a separate admission, visitors to the museum can tour the studio and see where Wood stood as he painted "American Gothic," which is on display at the Art Institute of Chicago and will be on loan to the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art beginning in September.

Also on permanent display at the museum are works by additional regionalist painters, including Marvin D. Cone and Mauricio Lasansky. Cone was a graduate of and professor at Coe College and focused on nature in his art, seeking to "evoke his inner vision of nature rather than to create a realistic depiction of the rural landscape," according to the museum's Web site.

A native of Argentina and now living in Iowa City, Lasansky uses the intaglio method of printmaking, where a metal plate is incised with lines and ink is spread on the surface until it settles into the grooves. The remaining ink is then wiped away, and the plate and a damp sheet of paper are run through a press, which forces the ink onto the paper. Much of Lasansky's work - large, complicated, colorful and focusing mainly on the human form - resides in newly reinstalled galleries at the museum.

"There is a variety of work, but the focus that our museum has taken in the last few years has been regionalist art," says Mills. "We want to help people realize that the Midwest was a big influence in helping create the regionalist movement."

Mills says visitors could easily spend a half-day touring the museum with additional time for Grant Wood Studio and the current visiting exhibit, "Art in Roman Life: Villa to Grave," which opened in September 2003 and will remain until August. In its lengthy stay, the exhibit displays the museum's collection of 21 Roman portrait busts alongside 150 Roman objects - including sculpture, jewelry, furniture and coins - borrowed from other major museum collections.

"If we have special exhibitions they usually last at least three months, and three months is actually a pretty good length of time for most museum exhibitions," says board member Deba Leach. "This two-year Roman exhibition is pretty special. We had to deal with 1,600 years of history so it's good we had two years to talk about it."

The opportunity for a maximum number of people to see visiting exhibits and the educational value of such displays is important to Leach, who believes museums like hers deserve help from the community.

"I believe strongly in the school children having a place to go where they can be exposed to good arts and here they can learn about the visual arts," she says. "We appreciate art. We don't ask you to be art historians or budding artists, we just ask you to come and get pleasure out of the beauty. It's one of our state's most important contributions to American art."

GO & DO

Interested in seeing what the art Cedar Rapids has to offer?

What: Cedar Rapids Museum of Art

Where: 410 Third Ave. SE, Cedar Rapids, 52401

Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday: 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Thursday: 10 a.m.-7 p.m. (4-7 p.m. free admission)

Sunday: noon-4 p.m.

Closed Mondays and major holidays

More info: Call (319) 366-7503 or visit www.crma.org