Through his innovative artistic style, Grant Wood became known and appreciated throughout the world and was forever credited as the artist who celebrated the land and people of Iowa. By the early 1930s, his new painting style helped prompt the creation of the Regionalist art movement. Wood and contemporaries including John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton believed artists should be free to paint the people and places they knew best. He believed art should be made for everyone and strongly urged America to develop its own artistic identity rather than import one from Europe. Wood promoted Regionalism by helping develop the Stone City Art Colony, which operated during the summers of 1932 and 1933 to train new artists close to home instead of sending them to Europe to study. He and the other instructors greatly inspired the students who attended the colony. Wood also served as Associate Professor in Art at the University of Iowa, where in the first year after his appointment the art department grew from 550 to 750 students. At the same time, he became Iowa director of the Public Works Art Project and oversaw several projects, including the murals at the new library at Iowa State University in Ames.