The M’s New Wing: Putting the 'Minnesota' back in American Art

 

My wife and I have a saying about the Twin Cities: the odds are good. It was a real culture shift moving here from Chicago ten years ago, in part because this place is so much smaller. Familiar faces pop up more frequently than you’d expect in a major city — at the grocery store, on a dogwalk, running errands across town, everywhere. I’ve run into good friends at the airport on more than one occasion. One time, an artist I went to high school with twenty-five years ago in Jackson, Mississippi, who now lives in Iowa, randomly showed up with her students at my studio during a First Thursday event. It took us a few minutes to even make the connection, and it left us both asking: What are the odds? In a place this small and tightly packed with magic, the odds are good.

But the odds of seeing familiar faces in the galleries of an art museum are usually a lot worse. I’ve run into friends by chance in the hallways of Mia and the Walker, sure, but the artworks on the walls and pedestals are, more often than not, only familiar from textbooks. Imagine my delight when, before the press preview of The M’s New Wing even started, I recognized no fewer than five friends of mine through the gallery window — artwork by living, breathing, practicing Minnesotans! And good stuff, too: Melissa Cooke Benson, Pao Houa Her, Leslie Barlow, Melvin Smith, Xavier Tavera, all intermingled with the likes of Ben Shahn and Jacob Lawrence and other big names from the textbooks. They even had MPLSART’s own 2020 and 2021 original Sketchbook Project books out on prominent display, opened to the pages of Stacey Combs, Gordon Coons, Melodee Strong, and others. The sketchbooks are under glass, but the curators plan on turning the pages every so often to reward repeat visits — and, of course, to showcase more of the artists working (as the show is titled) here and now.

“We've talked about it as a Minnesota lens,” says Assistant Curator Kylie Linh Hoang, who co-curated this exhibition with Bob Cozzolino. “What does it mean that Minnesota has all of these ties to all of these really important art movements? Does it mean that Minnesota was just influenced by those movements? I don't think that that's true. I think Minnesota was influencing, was an active part of a lot of these really important American art movements.”

 

Top: The 2020 MPLSART Sketchbook Project books, featuring (from left) Jennifer Davis, Reid Olson, Stacey Combs, and Gordon Coons. Middle: Xavier Tavera, Alia Lene, High School for Recording Arts, 2014. Archival pigment print. Bottom: Here, Now Salon Portrait Wall installation view. All photos by Russ White.

 

After years of construction, renovation, and delays, the museum’s New Wing is finally open, and the new gallery spaces — lined with marble floors and painstakingly restored stained glass ceilings — afford the work on display a grandeur that was worth the wait. The expansion has tripled the museum's footprint, and with over 5,000 pieces in their collection, The M finally has enough room to do some unboxing and share their archive with their audience. Even though this inaugural exhibition is scheduled to run almost three full years — through May of 2027 — the show will stay fluid, rotating different works from the collection out of the shadows and into the glittering, golden light of these beautiful arcades.

 

Foreground: Warren MacKenzie, Fluted Jar with Lid, 2006. Stoneware. At right: Shōji Hamada, Untitled (vase), ca. 1952. Stoneware.

 

“We want people to understand that every time they come back, they will see something new, whether it's something that was there before and they didn't notice because there's a lot to see or whether it's a rotation” says Executive Director Dr. Kate Beane (Flandreau Santee Sioux Dakota and Muscogee Creek). “Our collection has not been seen for so long…. The whole reason we're here is to care for this collection and to share the collection so that the collection is back in community with its people.”

Moving further into the gallery spaces, more familiar faces emerge: George Morrison, Jim Denomie, Ta-coumba Aiken, Rotem Tamir, Warren MacKenzie, Frank Gaard. Minnesota is no monoculture, and fittingly the curators have made a point of representing as many communities and histories with its collection as possible. You’ll find work by Dakota, Ojibwe, Cree, and HoChunk artists next to American artists of Hmong, Chinese, European, and African descent. You’ll find a ribbon skirt by Rachel King (Red Lake Ojibwe), paintings and collages about Rondo by Melvin and Rose Smith, a connection to WARM through works by Hazel Belvo and Miriam Schapiro, and even Vulcans at the Winter Carnival by Clem Haupers. Not all of this work was sitting around waiting to be shown, either; the collection has been actively growing over the past few years, as Beane and the curators have ramped up a serious program of new acquisitions, including mindful purchases of works by Indigenous artists. Avis Charley’s 2022 painting Smile Now, Cry Later, which Beane found on a trip to New Mexico, was the very first work by a Dakota artist added to The M’s catalog.

“It took getting a Dakota executive director going to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to bring Dakota artwork back to our collection,” Beane explains, “which I think speaks to that story of filling in the gaps.”

“I think we often hear the term underrepresented in museums,” says Hoang, “and I don't think that that's the most honest way to say it. I think the most honest way to say it is historically excluded, and that shows the intention of what was happening in these spaces.”

 

Top: Jim Denomie (Ojibwe, Lac Courte Oreilles Band), Oz, the Emergence, 2017. Oil on canvas. Bottom: Ed Archie NoiseCat (Salish), Sea Monster and Otter, 1995. Yellow cedar, red cedar, copper, basswood, and abalone.

 

“What’s been interesting for me coming into the M,” says Beane, who is in her third year as Executive Director, “is I think sometimes people expect that when a BIPOC leader comes in or when you diversify, when you add in other perspectives, experiences, and representations, there's always this fear of erasure. ‘Oh, they're not going to remember the historic collection.’ No, we can still highlight those works and show the connections, because the connections are there. It’s not about erasure; it’s about inclusion.”

Those connections to the world outside the Midwest show up throughout the exhibition, from mid-20th century Bay Area painter Joan Brown’s large figures to Wing Young Huie’s ethnocentric tour of America, from Stuart Davis’s 1939 World’s Fair mural sketch to Warren MacKenzie’s collaborative friendship with Japan’s “Living National Treasure” Shōji Hamada. Smack in the middle of one room devoted entirely to George Morrison stands a Louise Nevelson sculpture — the two artists were friends, it turns out, and at one point had traded works with each other. Other big names include Joan Mitchell, Grant Wood, and Thomas Hart Benton, all of whom had some connection to this place, its artists, and this museum.

It’s no small task to make sense of a collection this deep — to research how and why all these objects came to be here — especially for a small, relatively new staff. (Credit should also be given to Dr. Laura Wertheim Joseph, who put in a lot of work at The M before leaving this summer to join the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.) Add to that a massive construction project that found them uncovering and restoring the very bones of their building, and you get the sense that this is a museum that has been hard at work finding itself. Figuring out who they are in this space, with all of these things.

“We really got to know this building very personally,” says Beane. “It’s been a wonderful experience for our team, and to be able to make those connections between the building and the future mission of the organization is really pretty beautiful.”

 

Top: Joan Brown, Nude in the Surf (detail), 1963. Oil on canvas. Bottom: Meg Lionel Murphy, This Is War (detail), 2019. Gouache on Arches paper.

 

“There's a lot of call and response between objects that have been set up in these different rooms,” says Cozzolino. “One of the wonderful things about discovering and rediscovering The M’s collection, I think for the public, but also for me, is just seeing what these wonderful things that don't seem to have anything in common on paper do when they're in the same room together.”

Getting a walkthrough with the curators is a special treat, but if you can swing a tour with the actual art handlers, I highly recommend it. These are the folks who know the works more intimately than almost anyone, and they know exactly how much work it takes to mount a show of this scale and quality.

“It's really fun to talk to people that care about art, that know art and know the specific works,” says Exhibition Services Manager Prerna, an artist herself. “I remember hanging the Jacob Lawrence piece, and it was so sweet. I had done this residency, and the studio I had gotten was the Jacob Lawrence studio, and here I was like, I can't believe I get to hang this! Standing in front of these works, I'm like, your legs should be quaking right now.”

 

The install crew (from left) Prerna, Klark Eversman, and Maddy Chamberlain strike a pose after a job well done, in front of a work by Rabbett Before Horses Strickland.

 

With preparatory workers Maddy Chamberlain and Klark Eversman on her team, the trio have been building out the museum’s woodshop and staging room over the past month or two, once major construction completed. Building pedestals, measuring vitrines, making the jigs and engineering the systems to actually hang all the artwork — this is also the work of a museum, and it all had to come together remarkably fast. It’s worth remembering how much credit the grubby, cackling carpenters with bits of blue tape stuck to their shirts should get for how beautiful everything looks in the end. The same with artists in their studios — a wild bunch of weirdos whose hard work can land them, against all odds, in hallowed marble halls like these.

Museums get a lot of grief for a lot of good reasons, but it’s a breath of fresh air to see one of our own deliver a show with this much heart, this much history, and with so many stunning moments, from the stained glass ceilings to the rendezvous with old friends. Perhaps best of all is the opportunity to make some new acquaintances along the way.

“Art should be a part of everybody's everyday lives,” says Beane. “It's not this elitist thing only for a few. It's for all of us, and it's something that we all should be able to connect with and enjoy and be inspired by. It's so important right now.”

With a smile, Hoang adds, “That’s why The M is free.” ◼︎ 

 

George Morrison (Grand Portage Band of Ojibwe), Sky with Constellations, 1983. Ink on paper.

 

The M is hosting an Open House this Saturday, October 26, 10am – 4pm. Here, Now is on view through May 2027. Also on view are Together through October 27 and Hilo de la Sangre through January 15.