Looking for more?&nbsp;The Summer Art Fest Guide will be updated regularly throughout the summer. Check back often for new events. Also, be sure to check out the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/calendar/upcoming">upcoming exhibition calendar</a>. 
 
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2025 Summer Art Festival Guide

Banner image:&nbsp;Frank Gaard, Channeling Kathy Halbreich through Sandra B (detail), 1993&ndash;4. Acrylic on paper. Gift of Joe Woodside. All photos by Russ White.

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Have you ever walked into a crowded room and felt like everyone suddenly stopped their conversations to turn and&nbsp;look at you? It&#39;s often an eerie, uncomfortable moment &mdash; sometimes all in your&nbsp;head, sometimes very much the reality &mdash; and I think about it every time I enter a room full of portraits:&nbsp;All of these people frozen in time and space, peering out at the visitors as each of us joins the party.&nbsp;

The Minnesota Museum of American Art, aka the M, currently has just such an exhibition on view &mdash; recently extended to run through August 3&nbsp;&mdash; called <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/when-youre-in-the-mirror" target="_blank">when you&#39;re in the mirror...</a>&nbsp;The exhibition brings together over thirty different works that span time, medium, and meaning, juxtaposing paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs mostly from the M&#39;s collection in a show that asks what it means to be perceived by an artist and what it means as a viewer to share in that perception.

After getting a tour of the exhibition &mdash;&nbsp;which is organized into sections about the dual invisibility and scrutiny faced by marginalized communities, the connection between lovers, and the depictions of family, masculinity, and feminity &mdash; I reached out to Assistant Curator Kylie Linh Hoang, who curated this show, to learn more.

&nbsp;

<img alt="Painted portrait of man with curly black hair in front of graffiti" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/99aa354a-f952-43d7-a158-88be0f7e6fa9/99aa354a-f952-43d7-a158-88be0f7e6fa9.full.jpg" />Leslie Barlow, Alex, at Juxtaposition Arts (detail), 2020. Oil and acrylic on panel. Collection Bockley Gallery.

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Russ White: It&#39;s interesting to note that almost all of the works in the show are portraits of individual people, sitting or standing alone in the picture plane. Did you have a definition of what is or is not a portrait as you curated the show? Is it about focusing on an individual more than a scene &mdash; does more than one person a portrait no longer make?

Kylie Linh Hoang: Because the show emphasizes the relational aspect of portraiture, I focused on the depths of individual relationships rather than interpersonal dynamics between multiple people. One of the paintings in the show with multiple subjects is Clara Mairs&rsquo;s&nbsp;Self Portrait with Haupers,&nbsp;ca 1930. This painting is in a section that considers Mairs and Haupers as reciprocal muses. Because their relationship is the topic of the section, Mairs&rsquo;s relationship with, and depiction of herself was relevant to her relationship with and depiction of Haupers. I think portraits with multiple people and consequently more complicated relationships could be a cool expansion of the show.

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RW: As an artist who portrays other people myself, I think about this a lot: do you think of these portraits as reflective more of the sitters, of the artists, or as a collaboration between the two?

KLH: I see it as a collaboration. Both people in this relationship are opening themselves up for scrutinous observation: the sitter of their physical self, and the artist of their creative self. After my studio visit with you last year, I began to think about how intimate seeing another person can be, and how vulnerable it is to allow yourself to be seen.&nbsp;Your work is interesting to me because your subjects are so varied: friends, colleagues, and professional models all show up in your work, and I am interested in how your relationships with these people develop and change.

The collaboration between artist and subject is especially evident to me in Leslie Barlow&rsquo;s&nbsp;Alex, at Juxtaposition Arts, 2020. Alex is a dear friend of mine, and I think Barlow was able to capture his charm through her sensitive and thoughtful framing and use of color. The attention to the detail in his face and hair are especially luminous, but Alex&rsquo;s stance and gaze feel intensely his own.

&nbsp;

<img alt="Charcoal drawing of woman with flattop haircut and shrouded in thin fabric" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/ee854976-c87c-4ef2-aac5-f50cf731f479/ee854976-c87c-4ef2-aac5-f50cf731f479.full.jpg" />Susan Hauptman, Self-portrait (detail), 1995. Charcoal and pastel on paper Gift of Craig and Lynn Jacobson.

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RW: There are a few self-portraits in the show as well, by artists like Wanda G&aacute;g, Susan Hauptman, and Clara Mairs. What do we learn about these artists from how they depict themselves?

KLH: I&rsquo;m realizing that all the self-portraits in the exhibition are by women. That wasn&rsquo;t intentional, but I think it&rsquo;s meaningful. I have been drawn to Susan Hauptman&rsquo;s unflinching studies of her own face and body and was delighted to be able to share the 1995 self portrait from the M&rsquo;s collection. It almost feels confessional to see Hauptman through her own eyes, but some of it feels like a performance as well. Sometimes her outfits are symbolic in her work, here the sheer shawl and singular glove feel like echoes of grandeur. I&rsquo;ve read that she liked preserving the mystery around her work, but I can&rsquo;t help but hypothesize their meanings.

While not included in the show, Alice Neel&rsquo;s 1980 self-portrait also came to mind. This work shows her skill centering women in portraiture the way men have always been. Neel makes me think about non-sexual nudes and the power of taking up space.

&nbsp;

<img alt="Painting of a woman in front of flowers." class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/b6499f58-1dcd-4530-9728-1494b3fdbf41/b6499f58-1dcd-4530-9728-1494b3fdbf41.full.jpg" /><img alt="Paintings hanging on black walls in an art museum" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/b8d6bd4b-6117-484e-ac52-3d6cd82bfcfe/b8d6bd4b-6117-484e-ac52-3d6cd82bfcfe.full.jpg" />Top: Frances Cranmer Greenman,&nbsp;Gertrude at the Organ, 1922. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Thomas J. Arneson. Bottom:&nbsp;when you&#39;re in the mirror..., Installation view. Foreground, left to right, work by Kat Eng, Maiya Lea Hartman, and Wing Young Huie.

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RW: One of the things I appreciate about your curation of this and Here, Now is your interest in rigorous research in the service of storytelling, specifically in the stories about how each piece came to be created, then collected, and ultimately curated in relation to the others. Those stories help ground both the shows and the museum&#39;s collection in something tangible and meaningful. Are there any stories that especially stand out to you in this show?

KLH: I&rsquo;m a historian by training and I really enjoy being in the research stage of a project.

The most exciting development that I made for this project was the research on Nikol Schattenstein&rsquo;s&nbsp;Portrait of Marion Davies, 1920s. In the database, we had Marion&rsquo;s name spelled incorrectly, but I was pretty sure that this painting was of the 1920s movie star. To make a correction to the record in our database, though, I needed to be absolutely sure. I set out by looking at the acquisition paperwork for the painting from the 1970s and saw that there was a note from an appraiser that identified the subject of the painting as Marion Davies, an &ldquo;actress, in costume from one of her movies.&rdquo; With that confirmation, I started looking at some of the films she appeared in to identify the costume.&nbsp;After watching The Bachelor Father and The Cardboard Lover, I found&nbsp;A Beautiful Rebel, which was also promoted under the title&nbsp;Janice Meredith. Davies is on the poster for this film with the same dress, wig, and fan as the painting in the M&rsquo;s collection.

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RW: Most of these works already belong in the museum&#39;s permanent collection. Do you see this show in any way as an extension of the portrait walls in <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/here-now" target="_blank">Here, Now</a>?

KLH: My excitement for portraits definitely came from working with Bob Cozzolino on&nbsp;Here, Now, but I think the approach for this show was a little different. The portrait room in the M&rsquo;s new wing was meant to be an array of figures welcoming you into the new space. For that reason, works were selected to emphasize the depth of the collection in form, materiality, and style. For&nbsp;when you&rsquo;re in the mirror&hellip;&nbsp;I was focused on smaller sections of works that felt particularly resonant through the framing of intimacy in portraiture.

The way Cozzolino looks at and thinks about art is so engrossing and kinetic, and I feel like I grew a lot in our time working together. While they&rsquo;re different projects, I&rsquo;m very flattered if people feel a similar energy between the two installations.

&nbsp;

<img alt="Two bright portraits side by side of a man and a woman." class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/710b9498-ced2-45fa-911e-6ac60a151345/710b9498-ced2-45fa-911e-6ac60a151345.full.jpg" />Patricia Olson, Jay Torvik and Beth Bergman, 2013. Oil on two panels. Courtesy of Jay Torvik and Beth Bergman.

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RW: The exhibition title comes from Charli xcx song 360. Was the choice to frame the show through pop music a way to make a museum show more accessible to the general public?

KLH: The choice to frame the show through Charli was actually inspired by our former colleague Prerna. During the installation of&nbsp;Here, Now, P had&nbsp;Brat&nbsp;(and all of its remixes) playing on a loop in the new wing. It was a fun couple of weeks where we spent a lot of time with the collection physically and Charli filled the sonic landscape. In a way, the collection is almost entwined with&nbsp;Brat&nbsp;in my mind now.

I didn&rsquo;t have a whole lot of time to work on this show, but I wanted to keep thinking about portraits and perception. Because&nbsp;Brat&nbsp;is such an introspective and multifaceted look at how Charli sees herself, I think of it as almost another artwork in the exhibition.

&nbsp;

RW: Do the selfies people take in the mirror and post become, in your mind, part of the exhibition as well?

KLH: Yes. I have always said that I want folks to see themselves reflected here, and subtlety has never been a strong suit of mine.

After spending time walking through the exhibition and considering how relationships impact our perceptions, of others and ourselves, my hope was to create space for visitors to think about how their experiences relate to what they saw in the exhibition.&nbsp;◼︎&nbsp;

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<img alt="Bearded man taking selfie in an oval mirror with text &quot;do you like what you see?&quot;" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/d022efca-cab0-4af9-9957-abb394bcd4cb/d022efca-cab0-4af9-9957-abb394bcd4cb.full.jpg" />The author takes a selfie on his way out, pondering Charli&#39;s question.

<a href="https://mmaa.org/when-youre-in-the-mirror/" target="_blank">when you&#39;re in the mirror...</a> is currently on view in the Nancy and John Lindahl Gallery at the <a href="https://mmaa.org" target="_blank">Minnesota Museum of American Art</a> in Saint Paul through Sunday, August 3. Gallery hours are Thursday &ndash; Sunday, 10am &ndash; 4pm.

As a show of portraits gets extended, we ask the M's assistant curator about the stories behind all those faces

When you're in the M... : Q&A with Kylie Linh Hoang

If you drove through St. Paul at night in late November, you might have thought the District Energy steam plume was possessed. &nbsp;If you had called the number projected on the side of the building, you would have found out it kind of was. &nbsp;The Plume Project, a collaboration between the power plant and three artists from the City Art Collaborator, uses lights and projectors to transform the ever-present plume of white steam wafting above downtown St. Paul into three different works of art.&nbsp;

<a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/solar-system-by-aaron-dysart">Solar System</a>, local sculptor and teacher Aaron Dysart&rsquo;s portion of the project, is the second installment and kicks off Wednesday, December 23. &nbsp;Dysart and his team of technicians will be using live-streamed data about the surface of the sun from a NASA satellite to create a light show that is constantly in flux within the steam plume. &nbsp;He sat down with Russ White to talk about public art, sustainability, and the fine art of collaboration.

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/dysart_1.jpg" /> Testing the setup

 
Russ White: To start, tell me about the project.

Aaron Dysart:&nbsp;There&rsquo;s a long, drawn-out history to this project. &nbsp;It really started out of this group through Public Art St. Paul called the City Art Collaboratory, which was 50% artists and 50% scientists and engineers. &nbsp;Basically, the group would tour a city infrastructure site every other month to see the space and ask questions. &nbsp;The second year when I was one of the artists we toured District Energy. &nbsp;Normally this tour lasts an hour; I think ours turned into four, because everyone kept asking questions. &nbsp;Everything is really intense; it&rsquo;s a power plant which is pretty crazy, but what they do in there and how they try to be as efficient and sustainable as possible was really fascinating.

The next month we had our meeting with Nina Axelson, the Vice President of PR at District Energy. &nbsp;She came just to chat, and everybody kind of fixated on the plume because it is so aesthetic and so public...it is the output of the plant that people really misunderstand because they think it&rsquo;s smoke and it&rsquo;s just steam. &nbsp;That idea really resonated with everyone.

RW: It&rsquo;s the kind of thing where it looks like pollution but is actually the opposite. &nbsp;It&rsquo;s actually a symbol of energy efficiency.

AD: Exactly. &nbsp;So how can you perform a simple switch of understanding, from revulsion to appreciation? &nbsp;People started firing off ideas. I did not come up with the Plume Project by any stretch, but I do remember asking Nina, as a joke because I have done a lot of work with disco balls, could we throw a disco ball up there? &nbsp;And she said, &ldquo;yeah, I think we could do that.&rdquo; &nbsp;Not jokingly&mdash;she was even taking notes. &nbsp;I said that it would require bolting stuff onto the side of your building, making sure it&rsquo;s safe etc&hellip;she wasn&rsquo;t phased...this complete willingness for her to say, &ldquo;yeah, I think we could do that,&rdquo; completely blew my mind.

After that, Andrea Steudel invited Emily, Asia, and myself to start brainstorming about ideas over a campfire, with a pot of water and a projector. &nbsp;The Knight Arts Challenge came up as a funding opportunity, and that really forced our hand to think about what we wanted to do. &nbsp;When writing that grant, we came up with the idea of doing three separate smaller projects. &nbsp;As a group we would work through, coordinate, and organize the whole thing with legal stuff, budgeting, and fundraising etc, but the artistic aesthetic of each project was to headed by one artist.

RW: Yeah, you&rsquo;re collaborating but with your own autonomy at the same time.

AD: All three of us have had different roles in the overall project. &nbsp;But when Emily&rsquo;s debuted, that&rsquo;s her idea and her project, same with Asia&rsquo;s and mine. &nbsp;We are three artists with different interests and working methods, we help each other with logistics and critical feedback, but in the end, this is your project that has the support of the group.

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/dysart_3.jpg.jpg" /> A View of the Plume

RW: So for Solar System, your part of the Plume Project, it&rsquo;s like a live feed of the surface of the sun?

AD: Yeah, It takes about 8 minutes for the light to reach the satellite, and there is a data dump from the satellite every three minutes.

Five points are mapped on the equator of the sun, which is the most active part of the sun. &nbsp;Each one of those positions is tied directly to a light in the plume. &nbsp;The program takes the standard deviation of the sampled set, and then based on that number it dictates how bright that light is. &nbsp;Also if it is a high standard deviation (more volatile), the light itself will fluctuate faster.

RW: At first, I thought you were simply projecting a video of the sun&rsquo;s surface onto the plume, but it&rsquo;s actually much more technically demanding and visually abstract than that.&nbsp;

AD: I&rsquo;m a strong believer in the visual being primary, but I readily admit that if you don&rsquo;t know how the show is being generated, you won&rsquo;t get the connection to the sun. &nbsp;First and foremost it has to be beautiful and compelling and then, upon investigation, it has all these multiple layers that can be discovered. &nbsp;It is tied to the sun both directly and conceptually and for me, the light show is kind of like the hook into the complexity of the piece. &nbsp;

RW: The first of the installations, Emily Stover&rsquo;s Rumblings, ran November&nbsp;17 &ndash; December 8 and featured lights that strobed to the rhythm of pre-recorded poetry spoken over the phone to anyone who called in to a hotline. &nbsp;Was there a good reaction to that? &nbsp;Did people engage with Emily&rsquo;s show?

AD: Yeah, everyone loved it, and it has gotten great press and amazing community support. &nbsp;&nbsp;I&rsquo;m not even a huge poetry fan, but there was something really compelling about being the only person that could hear it at a time and this personal experience was just so public. &nbsp;I was up at Mounds Park and dialed the phone number and all of a sudden the plume lit up instantly. &nbsp;It was pretty wild.

RW:&nbsp;Did it only light up when people called?

AD: It had a throbbing white light like a heartbeat until someone called, and then that would go down and the colored lights would come on and match the rhythm of the poem.

RW: So everyone in the city could tell when somebody called the hotline? &nbsp;That&rsquo;s amazing.

AD: Yes, it was great.

<img class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/written/temp/dysart_2.jpg.jpg" /> A View of the Plume

RW:&nbsp;What do you hope is the take-away from your piece?

AD: I first want to make something visually compelling. &nbsp;If it is compelling enough people will start digging deeper, and I hope they think about the sun&rsquo;s role in life and the role of the plant within the city and what&rsquo;s central to their lives. &nbsp;This local plant and the sun are at the center and origin of power and are things that drive our existence. &nbsp;One is next door, another is light years away, but both are taken for granted. &nbsp;In addition, I just want people to know how amazing this power plant that uses sustainable biomass is.

RW: How long has it been operating this way?

AD: 30 years? Twenty-five, thirty? I forget, and it has this amazing history. &nbsp;The whole system district energy of sending hot water in throughout the whole city, heating around 80% of downtown sustainably&hellip;they were even the only plant of their kind in the states recognized by the UN. &nbsp;&nbsp;I&rsquo;m fascinated by it and proud to have it in the cities, but the subtle power of its location is truly amazing. &nbsp;What I&rsquo;ve always loved about that plant is it&rsquo;s on a major thoroughfare in the city rather than the suburbs or someone else&rsquo;s backyard. &nbsp;It&rsquo;s right in the middle of where it is needed. &nbsp;If we want power, if we want heat, we need to know what it takes to get it, and here&rsquo;s a sustainable way to do it, right here in the middle of the city. &nbsp;When I started thinking about, what&rsquo;s the source of all power, it&rsquo;s the sun, which is in the center of our solar system. &nbsp;It&rsquo;s that linking the center of the city to the center of the solar system through distinct points that really excites me. &nbsp;

RW:&nbsp;And it seems like this project speaks to people taking things for granted: having this power plant, seeing this plume and not knowing what it is when it is heating their homes.

AD: And that&rsquo;s the hope. &nbsp;The plume is this thing that people malign, and it should be one of the things people are most proud of. &nbsp;This sounds like a cheesy sound bite, but when we did the first test with projectors and lights well over a year ago, some of the workers came out to see what we were doing. &nbsp;We told them about the project and what we were trying to do, and one of the workers said &ldquo;thank you&rdquo;, because each panoramic shot of St. Paul from the river on the news always stops at the plant. &nbsp;They won&rsquo;t show it because they think it&rsquo;s not scenic. &nbsp;And we just said no, we should be saying we have this right here, and we should be really proud. &nbsp;

<a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/solar-system-by-aaron-dysart">Solar System</a> will be on view every night through January 12th. &nbsp;The third and final installation, <a href="http://www.mplsart.com/events/plume-coloring-contest-by-asia-ward/">Asia Ward&rsquo;s Plume Coloring Contest</a>, will run during the St. Paul Winter Carnival from January 28 to February 7. &nbsp;For more info and to submit to the Coloring Contest, visit <a href="http://www.plumeproject.com/">http://www.plumeproject.com</a>.

-&nbsp;<a href="http://russ-white.com/" target="_new">Russ White</a>

An illuminating conversation about public art and energy with one of the artists lighting up the St. Paul skyline  this winter.

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