from
the collection
…
Painting the Place Between
(01
Dec, 2012 – 17 Feb, 2013)
Minnesota
Museum of American Art
30 Nov
2012, St Paul, MN
I
have not attended MMAA’s programming events for several years due to
having moved to Chicago for school. Let
me say, their new Project Space at 4th and Robert Street in downtown
St Paul is exceptionally light and approachable, and the same artistic
community I have grown to love and value over the years, was in appearance at
the event celebrating core holdings representing Minnesota’s regional artistic
heritage. The theme of the show seemed
to focus on a sense of place – an odd but fitting theme for a city celebrating
the 150th Anniversary of its rather dark history in removing Native
American tribes from their homes along the Mississippi River and resorting to armed
force to evict many of them from the state entirely. The background cultural context is the
approaching anniversary of the hanging of 38 (of 300 sentenced) Siouan patriots as traitors, the
day after Christmas, and a growing sense of and appreciation for the presumed
unrealistic goal presented by many Native American Minnesotans that the
historic Fort Snelling be razed, its removal reopening emotional and cultural
access by the Native American community to that area which had once been a
cultural heartland for their civilization.
Not since my time spent in Cape Town, South
Africa, or more precisely, Tshwane, fka Pretoria, and Mbombela, fka Nelspruit,
have I sensed such a salient, if silent, contestation of the sense of place in
a wider, post-colonial geography.
 |
| Song Yer Thao Field (2012) |
While the curatorial staff intended the
show to “shape a vision of our natural
space as mediated by the artist’s subjective experience and the shared legacy
and aura of painting on canvas… offer[ing] up evidence of the role the painter plays
in how we view and interpret our landscapes as common ground and shared legacy,”
the question on everyone’s mind is by what right and to what extent is this
legacy truly shared, to what extent is this legacy contested, and how do the
arts impact or facilitate either geographic appropriation or multi-cultural resistance. While the works by Betsy Byers, Bette Carlon,
Jil Evangs, Andrew Wykes, and Phyllis Wiener definitely are in dialogue with
the Western cultural canons, they are also dialoguing with American imperialist
art traditions dating back to Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, and even Ansel
Adams. All of the artists are perceived to
be white Minnesotans, with the exception of Hmong artist Song Yer Thao whose Field (2012), rather than contrasting with
the other works, lends stylistic support to that of Jil Evans, Phyllis Wiener
and Holly Swift. Still, one to left to
ponder whether Fort Snelling has given up its cannon for the canon.
