Ideas can have such long legs.
Many long years ago, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I read an article in the then-Minneapolis Star Tribune about the then-head of what was then-called the Minneapolis Institute of Art. It was, even then, a vast magnificent repository of thousands of objects. The reporter asked Evan Maurer a smart question; how on earth would one person, a director, gain a sense of the thousands of wonderfully unique art pieces that made up the collection? How could one?
As I recall (this is purely recollection: I cannot find the article), the answer came in the form of a story. Maurer began each workday by choosing one object from the collection… a painting, a sculpture, a pot… anything at all, and began by standing in front of it, just looking. He, I had the impression, ingested it. Took sustenance from it. Something different every day. And then he went on to run the museum.
I was caught and, apparently, caught deep. The practice sounded to me both wise and luxurious. Time well spent, and a manageable approach to an impossible task. I was at the time the production manager at the Guthrie Theater, where I started my own long and chaotic workdays by what I called walk-about, passing through the shops and rehearsal spaces, talking to makers of all stripes, as a way of making continuous sense of that very complicated place. The theatre, then on Vineland Place, was also full of powerful objects, not on static display, but in energetic motion, as everything was designed and made in service to the plays. No matter how fascinating the work, standing still and contemplating it was rarely an option.
At least that’s the way Mr. Maurer’s story took root with me.
I don’t recall any framework on time. The New York Times, I learn, has a feature called the 10-Minute Challenge, published on the first Monday of every month. The task they describe is to look, uninterrupted, at an artwork for ten minutes. No reading, no phone, no conversation, no distraction. They call it “a modest attempt to sharpen your focus”.
There’s a version of this idea, sometimes called Slow Looking – catchy names are de rigueur in the age of the internet – which recommends as much as thirty minutes.
And now, it has occurred to me, I live across the street from an art museum. Hmmm.
The Minnesota Museum of American Art, called the M, in the majestic old Pioneer Endicott Building, with its recovered stained glass arcade, has a gallery of wonderful works that amply reward attention. Its permanent collection seems full of Minnesota friends…Ta-coumba Aiken, whose murals grace downtown Saint Paul. Mike Hazard, whose photographs leap off the walls. Marcella Rodriguez. Works from George Morrison. Jim Denomie (Ojibwe), looking at American life through his own particular lens. Frank Bigbear. A Hmong folktale story cloth. Wing Young Huie. A big new-ish piece purchased from the Minnesota State Fair Show. And a head-turning collection of what writer Julie L’Enfant called “Pioneer Modernists: Minnesota’s First Generation of Woman Artists” in her award-winning book.
Every single piece has a backstory. As Maurer said about his own collections, “If you collect anything, you know that every object you collect has its own story, the story of how it entered your life.” People have collections, and museums do, too. All of these things entered the M collection at some point in time, through some human action; all of them have a backstory.
I’m not a museum director. Next lifetime, maybe. But the other week I was in the M, walking through a gallery when I was captured, entirely, by a portrait. Who on earth is that, I thought? What is her story, that upright imperious creature? And who is the painter? And what is hers?
And how did the two of them reach out from the wall and lasso me walking by, more than one hundred years after their time together, standing for a portrait, and painting it?
I believe I’ll think about this; it will be fun. Reader, I invite you along for the ride. Next stop, next Motley: Portrait of Clara Mairs, 1923, by Frances Cranmer Greenman, at the Minnesota Museum of American Art, Saint Paul, Minnesota.
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Photo by the author, Minnesota Museum of Modern Art, Saint Paul, MN.
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