Mia has hosted local art since the very beginning. A look back traces the ongoing dialogue in art circles of what, exactly, local art is.
In 1920, about to open its sixth annual local art exhibition, the museum sought to downplay any regionalism, aspiring to something more universal: “The world is so bound together these days that there can be little sectional or even national flavor to art. … And so Minneapolis is not distinctive in her art from Chicago, or New York, or Omaha, or Galveston. … Whether for evil or for good we have become cosmopolitans.”
But in 1934, in advance of another local art show, it got defensive: “It is perfectly obvious to anyone who has followed the course of recent artists’ exhibitions here that the majority of the public is definitely hostile to much of the work produced by Minneapolis and St. Paul artists.”
The year before, the museum had tried to mix things up, asking the public to judge the local art exhibition. It apparently didn’t go well. “The experiment of having the public, rather than a jury, select the best works of art in the annual Local Artists’ Exhibition has proved a most interesting one,” the museum said, using a Midwest expletive (the i-word). “Most unexpected.”
By 1945, when this photo was taken of Carol Larson, Janet Kruse, and Beverly Hamilton admiring Miriam Bennett’s Sunrise sculpture at the 31st Annual Local Art Show, things seemed to have gotten on track. Two years earlier, Juliana Force, then the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York, had juried the local art show at Mia. She not only bought some of the work she encountered, she inspired local sculptors—including Miriam Bennett—to form the Minnesota Sculptors Group to promote their work. The scene had found its approval, even if it had to come from the East.