They called them rap sessions. Free-form conversations. Just you and me, man. No shoes, no problem.
This was the late 1960s or early 1970s, in the Print Study room of the museum. And Barbara Kaerwer, coordinator of Mia’s Student Volunteer program, appears perfectly comfortable meeting the teens where they’re at, tucked sideways in a chair, feet up—rapping.
The caption calls it an “informal lecture,” deliberately different from the usual practice—even today—of speakers behind a lectern. Kaerwer was the perfect person to suspend the rules. An art historian and collector, she was bent toward public education and the greater good—still is. She recently moved into a retirement community in Minneapolis and donated her five-acre Eden Prairie estate to the Nine Mile Creek Watershed District as park space, swatting away numerous offers from developers.
Over the years, she donated works to the museum, too, among them a drawing by Picasso and a lithograph by Toulouse-Lautrec. But mostly she’s remembered for being approachable and bold, a valuable combination at the museum as the changes of the ’60s swirled outside—and occasionally inside.