Minnesota Museum of American Art finishes $14.5M new wing that triples gallery space

The makeover of the St. Paul museum includes a restoration of the 1889 Cass Gilbert-designed stained glass arcade ceiling.

By Alicia Eler Star Tribune

November 7, 2024 — 6:00am

The Minnesota Museum of American Art has reopened. The museum, known as the M, now offers more than 6,000 square feet of gallery space in St. Paul's historic Pioneer-Endicott Buildings, and the new wing hosts a rotating exhibition of more than 150 artworks from the museum's permanent collection.

"When I came in, everything was closed down," said the M's executive director, Kate Beane, who started in December 2021. "We weren't even open to the public. We were slimmed down to the leanest crew possible. The first few years here, what I've really been doing is listening and paying attention."

Despite the construction woes of downtown St. Paul, Beane is optimistic about the M's future. She envisions the museum as focused on community and stressed the importance of ongoing relationships with artists and underrepresented creative communities, while also retaining the M's rich history.

Inside the main gallery and the hallways, the rotating exhibition "HERE, NOW: Selections From the M's Collection," organized by former Minneapolis Institute of Art curator Bob Cozzolino and the M's assistant curator Kylie Linh Hoang, offers visitors a peek into the museum's 5,000-piece-plus collection.

New wing, new you

Cozzolino and Hoang's curation juxtaposes historic works with contemporary pieces, calling into question issues such as land acknowledgment and colonialism. The artwork fills two corridors of the historic Pioneer-Endicott Buildings, as well as a new gallery adjacent to the lobby.

Leya Hale's (Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota/Diné) video "Water Is Our First Medicine" is juxtaposed with Alexis Jean Fournier's late-19th-century painting "St. Anthony Falls and the Minneapolis Exposition Building." These works consider how white settlers saw destruction of the waterways as progress, while Native Americans considered it cultural erasure and the decimation of sacred spaces.

"It's really important to bring these historic works, these Jasper Francis Cropsey's, these Alexis Jean Fournier's, the William Merritt Chase, in conversation with contemporary artists, because I think that's what makes them interesting," Hoang said.

The first gallery features well-known local artists such as Pao Houa Her, Leslie Barlow, Tom Jones, Mike Hazard and Wanda Gág. The work is hung salon-style, with some works closer to the floor.

Cozzolino saw a need for Ojibwe modernist artist George Morrison to have his own gallery in the new wing.

"The Met, the Philadelphia Museum, the National Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, no museum could do that [George Morrison] room except for the M," Cozzolino said. That's because the M has 93 Morrison works in its collection. Next year, Morrison will be the subject of a major career survey at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Some of his works for that show will come from the M.

A new start

Beane, who is Flandreau Santee Sioux Dakota and Muscogee Creek, holds a doctorate in American Studies from the University of Minnesota. The M sits on Dakota land, yet there was something missing from its collection.

"When I came in, I was trying to understand the cultural and organizational history and where we were at," she said. "I came to find out that there was no Dakota art represented in the collection."

She visited the Santa Fe Indian Market in Santa Fe, N.M., and purchased Avis Charley's "Smile Now, Cry Later," a painting of a Dakota woman holding a red parasol. It is now in the front gallery, welcoming visitors.

It has been a long road for Beane, who started at the M nearly three years ago.

The position had been vacant for more than a year following the July 2020 firing of longtime director Kristin Makholm, and while there had been interim leadership, the building was still in the middle of major reconstruction.

The M finished phase one of its construction at its new home in St. Paul, opening in December 2018 with 16,000 square feet of exhibition, learning and gathering spaces. A second phase of expansion was originally slated to be completed in 2021, but Makholm left and plans changed.

While other Twin Cities museums reopened in late 2020 or early 2021, the M remained physically closed to the public until December 2023. In late 2021, it hosted "Many Waters: A Minnesota Biennial," featuring more than 50 artists, through the M's exterior-facing windows, inner vestibule and skyways, and offsite at NewStudio Gallery.

To make the second phase happen, Beane completed a $14.5 million capital campaign toward this project.

With the M fully reopened, Beane looks to the future.

"I always want to make sure that people understand that adding diversity is an additive process, it is not erasure, it is not taking away," she said. "We come from communities of erasure, and we know what that feels like, and we don't do things that way."