MN Museum of American Art finds a home

Posted at 4:54 PM on June 15, 2012 by Marianne Combs
Filed under: Funding, Museums

Starting in October the Minnesota Museum of American Art gets to hang its art on its own walls again.

Kristin Makholm
Photo courtesy the MMAA

The museum will move into a street level suite of galleries in the Pioneer Building this fall, where it will be open for limited hours each week. The partial re-opening will allow the museum to see if the new location will work as a permanent home. Executive Director Kristin Makholm says the location, near the edge of the Lowertown neighborhood, will help the museum become more integrated with the downtown St. Paul community.

This new home is right along the light rail line, it's right on the skyway, it's two blocks from Union Depot and from the hub of the Lowertown artists' community, and this location really will reflect and signify our embeddedness in the community in a new and dynamic way.

Three years ago the museum was forced to leave it's home on Kellogg Boulevard in downtown Saint Paul to make way for redevelopment. A lack of both funds and leadership forced the museum to put its collection in storage.

Then director Kristin Makholm was brought on board, and ever since she's been working to raise the funds for a new home, while simultaneously keeping the collection alive in people's minds by touring the works in galleries across the state.

Makholm says this move means a great deal for the museum and the community:

It will be like a living room where neighbors can play a real part in helping to determine what the new MMAA will be like. The "on the road" exhibitions we've been doing for the past couple of years have been important for the MMAA because they've allowed us to share our distinctive collection in new venues throughout the metro and state and to invite new audiences into the fold. Those exhibitions will continue to happen in the next few years.

Makholm says the new home will allow the museum to reconnect with the public. She says now is the time for the museum to take the next steps toward establishing a new home.

Everyone wants to see the MMAA back in a strong and significant way, and there is much support for this new gallery, this location, and the kind of exhibitions and activities that will be offered in the space.

Our goal is a permanent home and so, like any nonprofit, fund-raising and "funds-sustaining " are the challenges we see on the horizon. We are optimistic because we have received so much support from the community and government sources alike, for the build out of this new space and for our operations in general, but it will be important to continue to bring in supporters from the entire metro, state, and region who understand the unique stories the MMAA can and will tell through art and through collaborations with artists and other organizations.

The historic Pioneer Building was once home to the Pioneer Press.

A toast to history

Posted at 11:38 AM on June 15, 2012 by Marianne Combs
Filed under: Funding, Museums

There is now a working bar in the kitchen of Minnesota's first territorial governor, Alexander Ramsey.

The house where Alexander Ramsey lived when he first became a U.S. senator is now home to the occasional happy hour.
Photo courtesy of the Minn. Historical Society

As MPR's Rupa Shenoy reports, History Happy Hour is part of the Minnesota Historical Society's latest strategy to attract more visitors to historic sites.

Historical society program director Jayne Becker says Ramsey's wife, Anna, threw lavish parties and concerts, making the home a center of society in the years after the Civil War. Becker hopes to continue in that tradition.

"To walk in the door and hear, already, laughing, or hear talking, or clapping, it's just a way of stepping back in time and maybe actually getting a truer picture of what life was actually like when Alexander Ramsey and his wife lived here," Becker said.

The Ramsey family gave the mansion to the Minnesota Historical Society in the 1960s. Until about two-and-a-half years ago, the society had two full-time staff members working here. Budget cuts forced the Historical society down to one part-time staffer. The Ramsey House reduced its public hours.

The happy hour events could bring in money that would open the house again full-time, Becker said.

Tickets are $20 and come with two drinks. You can find out more about History Happy Hour here.