They seem caught in the act—of something. Painting a nude? Abstraction (gasp)? The woman with the large eyes holds the camera’s gaze as if daring the photographer—and us—to see what the brush is putting down. But they were almost certainly posed, standing as still for the camera as whatever was being painted.
Art students painting in the MIA galleries in 1922.
They were art students in 1914, back when the MIA included the Minneapolis School of Art. The school was around from the very beginning, in the 1880s, when the MIA was still known as the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts and first operated out of a downtown home on Hennepin Avenue and then the public library next door. When the MIA opened, in 1915, classes were held in the main building until moving to the Julia Morrison Memorial Building, built in its backyard the following year. The Morrison building is now the oldest part of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, spun off from the MIA in the 1970s.
The purpose was simple: the museum wasn’t meant to be dead, an attic of moldering curiosities. It was intended to keep the art alive. The museum put it a little less succinctly in 1920, proudly summing up the school’s value to the region, still popularly known as the Northwest, as in the Northwest Territory:
Students from the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts School painting “en plein air.”
“One set of principles determines art, but there are many interpretations, and to interpret aright this magnificent northwest, with its untold resources, with its commercial success and influence, with its poise in emergency, with its educational capacity and significance, with its natural beauty, with its energizing climate, this art school has a contribution to make toward the shaping of American art, and must be a true workshop for the young men and women whom it is founded to serve.”
In other words, get to work, ladies. These gallery walls aren’t going to fill themselves.
Watch for more Once at MIA flashbacks every Monday at MIA Stories.
Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.