Mathew (TELL): Alright, so I’ll just pretend you’re here with me, Katherine.

Katherine: I am here. So, we finally made it. We’re here to talk about An American Outpost.

Mathew (TELL): Yes…So cool. I’m excited. I set up some prompts for us to bounce around. You can say no or redirect…these are prompts, not mandates. I also sketched a set for bringing Lynne in to get WARM era stories.

Mathew (TELL): Let’s start with you. How did you become an art historian, and what drew you to Minnesota art specifically?

Katherine: My undergrad was in Russian history…originally I thought I’d be a Russian medievalist. I was particularly interested in icons so my interest in visual culture was there from the beginning, just…different. Then I went to grad school at the University of Leicester for museology and art history and drifted into prints. Dutch/Flemish 16th–17th century engravings are my main focus. The Minnesota project happened because, while finishing grad school, I was at the Minnesota Historical Society writing MNopedia entries on Minnesota art. There were almost no secondary sources on the subject…just scattered primary ones. I said to myself, “Someone should write a Minnesota art history.” A little later, a friend there told me that MNHS was offering research fellowships and I applied. The fellowship required a year of research and a public exhibition of the research. A finished book wasn’t a requirement. I figured maybe I’d never write actually turn my research into a finished product. But in the end I basically remade myself as an American art historian for one book.

Mathew (TELL): Why now, then? It sounds like the need found you.

Katherine: Exactly. I wanted to read the book that didn’t exist. Once I started, it got interesting fast.

Mathew (TELL): Are you obsessive like that…spark, then deep dive?

Katherine: Oh, absolutely. Obsessive researcher.

Mathew (TELL): What surprised you most across the period you covered?

Katherine: A lot. Older sources – secondary sources - frame us as conservative and prudish. But in the actual sources I researched, prudishness was often mocked. There was definitely a long lasting undercurrent of conservatism, but not the comic extent that was supposed. And of course Minnesota wasn’t alone in sometimes having a prudish outlook on art.

I was surprised by the St. Paul School of Art’s importance, by how just how many artists trained in Paris/New York and showed in major venues, and by how central the Twin Cities were to experimental/avant garde art…especially in the ’80s. In looking at the 80’s you can look up a respected national or international performance, video, or conceptual artists and…boom…there they were at the Walker, MCAD, UC Video, Film in Cities…Often they appeared at more than one of those, or somewhere else. And the local scene reflected these strong ties to the larger art world.

Mathew (TELL): Were those artists born here, or did they come because the scene called them?

Katherine: Some were from here; some came because of opportunities here. The Walker’s openness to the avant garde helped. MCAD aggressively brought artists in for residencies and lectures once they themselves had the clout.

Lynne: I’ll echo that. From the WARM side, MCAD and the Walker were doors…sometimes open, sometimes needing a knock. But the community circuit was real: you’d give a talk at MCAD, then end up on a WARM panel, then someone from Film in the Cities would say, “Come screen with us.” The bridges weren’t only coast to Midwest…they were room to room in the same week.

Mathew (TELL): You both mention bridges…Paris/New York here and back. Did that change by era?

Katherine: Yes. In the 19th century to the 1920s it went in one direction…artists would travel to the Art Students League in New York, then to Paris and the ateliers. Bringing all that influence and exposure back to Minnesota…if they came back to Minnesota. By the ’30s we started pulling some European artists here. Cameron Booth, who was a major Minnesota artist with strong ties to the European modernist scene, helped a lot in setting up these bridges. And these artists did not only show at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (at the time the Walker was essentially a non player). Booth got big important exhibitions to St. Paul: Yves Tanguy, Henry Moore’s first ever solo show, Joan Mitchell’s first ever solo show.

By the 60’s artists from outside Minnesota and artists from within were setting up a reciprocal relationship. By the ‘80s, it was heavy traffic back and forth.

Mathew (TELL): What was going on locally outside those bridges?

Katherine: There were a lot of galleries. The existence of galleries was pretty fragile, but there were some very interesting ones. In the 1960s, the Bottega Gallery on Hennepin was an early alternative space. Strong personalities…local art booster Robert Koehler in the 19th and early 20th century, artists Cameron Booth and Clement Haupers in the 1920s and 1930s. The Walker started its life as a center in the 1940s by showing a lot of local artists and intentionally strengthening the local scene. There were a lot of local artists. Studio hubs like 712 Hennepin in the 19th century acted as a collective center and that collective artist action repeated over and over, particularly in the 1930s and 1980s.

The public loved most of this of course. They loved having a thriving art scene that they could point to and say, “Look Minnesota is artistic; Minnesota is cosmopolitan.” But they often wouldn’t actually buy local. At least at the price points that will sustain artists.

Lynne: That tracks. At WARM we felt the love in attendance and press…but rent gets paid by sales. We built our own infrastructure to counter that: a slide registry, crit nights, a member run gallery, childcare during meetings, even a little “how to hang your show” boot camp. It was maintenance work…lots of it…but it kept artists in the game.

Mathew (TELL): So the dynamic is baked in: we support, but not always economically. Is it fair to say Minnesota has always lived between edge of national and making our own?

Katherine: Since the 1840s. The rhetoric that we are a little bit of the cosmopolitan…an outpost of the cosmopolitan…that can be found outside cities like New York started early. St. Paul pushed the “Athens of the West” sobriquet pretty hard in the 19th century. You see open comparisons to New York all the time and over and over…“Why don’t we have a museum like the one they’re building in Manhattan?” “Why don’t we have artists like those at the Art Students League?” “Why don’t we have an Art Students League?” “How do we prove to the world that Minnesota can stand up to anyone in the art world?”

Then the counter: “We’re not New York; be content.” Variations on this volley of questions repeat throughout art history…with modernism, abstract expressionism, pop art, etc. Avant garde stuff is for the MIA or the Walker. Why are local artists trying to participate in something maybe not really for them? Maybe we should just have our own style.

Mathew (TELL): It feels genetic…confidence and insecurity braided together.

Katherine: Exactly. The inferiority complex is a through line.

Lynne: Inside WARM we just stopped asking for permission. If the door was cracked, we walked through. If it wasn’t, we set up across the street. That posture helps with the complex…you spend less time litigating “Are we as good as New York?” and more time putting work on walls and paying artists.

Mathew (TELL): Why is it so hard to hold the scene? Two camps…contained regionalism vs. international footing?

Katherine: Since the 1910s! One camp clutching at picturesque Impressionism long after modernism had taken over Paris and New York. The other camp pushing modernist canvases in their own spaces, studying with Parisian abstractionists, and trying to bring Marcel Duchamp to Minneapolis. The same tension recurs with every artistic movement and wave.

Lynne: And the funniest thing is how cyclical “shocking” becomes. Our “Women’s Erotic Art Show” felt transgressive; some critics used euphemisms instead of the actual titles. But the audience largely rolled with it. The real friction wasn’t scandal…it was power: who gets budget, space, time on the calendar.

Mathew (TELL): In eras when we were great, what drove it?

Katherine: Charismatic organizers with reach and stamina were so important. I’m not sure you could say we were great in Robert Koehler’s day, but the scene was interesting and artists created interesting work and promoted interesting ideas. The Handicraft Guild, Minnesota’s hub of the Arts and Crafts Movement, was part of this era.

I suppose you could say we were greatest in the 80s, when we were such a hub of the national art scene. The era of Rifle Sport Gallery, Film in the Cities, UC Video, alternative art, Neo Expressionism, performance art, video art. We had two important local arts publications…Artpaper and Vinyl Arts. We had the gonzo art zine Artpolice. And we had such reciprocal relationships with the major hubs of the American art world, particularly the New York alternative art scene. There was so much cross pollination. And so much was weird and experimental.

Lynne: Plus logistics. We romanticize scenes, but someone has to book the room, find pedestals, write the grant, fix the lights. WARM ran like a small city: committees for everything. We learned that maintenance…Mierle Laderman Ukeles style…is creative force. It kept possibility in circulation.

Katherine: Yes, the ability to organize and show up is so important. Nobody can have a vital scene if no one is holding it together and finding the rent.

Mathew (TELL): Did the opulent ’80s bring broader appreciation?

Katherine: Like I said, the ‘80s was probably our greatest days in terms of all the things that people think of when imagining an art scene…artist collectives, competing art movements, constantly something to do, and new artists and art spaces popping up all the time. Minnesotans who thought about such things certainly appreciated the éclat a scene like that brings to a place. The sheen of cosmopolitanism. Rifle Sport…the seminal alternative gallery on Hennepin…was in the black by the late 1980s.

But the ‘80s ended and certain people thought that Minnesota could appreciate the art scene better if it had a less messy reputation. Rifle Sport was on Block E, an infamous block that also housed Minneapolis’ nudie theaters and dive bars. It had a reputation. The city demolished the block in 1988, killing off Rifle Sport and symbolically the downtown art scene. It was a parking lot for nearly two decades. Now it’s a Mayo Clinic sports facility.

Mathew (TELL): Through lines to now?

Katherine: The inferiority complex of the last hundred and fifty years or so persists.

Lynne: And the fix is the same: do the work, fund the work, archive the work. We learned to save our own records…posters, newsletters, slides…because memory is currency when institutions forget.

Mathew (TELL): If climate migration brings more outsiders, does that change the code?

Katherine: Maybe, but you don’t need a flood of outsiders to shift it. The balance we had…import, export, and local weird…can be rebuilt from anything.

Lynne: Outsiders help, but so does mobility. We pushed members to apply out of state, then bring that energy back. We also invited people in…not just to lecture, but to co install, to sit in crits. Exchange, not cameo.

Mathew (TELL): Beyond cheerleading, we need economic support. Patronage, collecting, commissioning…real money.

Katherine: Yes. Buy work at the price points that sustain artists’ practice.

Lynne: And spread the risk. In WARM we did pooled purchases…three people buy one work together and rotate it for a year. It sounds quaint, but it moves cash to the studio and builds collectors.

Mathew (TELL): Walker question: a former marketing director told me many supporters didn’t “get” the shows but knew supporting the Walker helped the Minnesota story. Has that changed?

Katherine: The Walker seems to be doing fewer “I don’t get it” exhibitions…or maybe we’re all better at getting things now. But there don’t seem to be shows that reflect the avant garde of nowadays. The Sophie Calle show was great, but it was a retrospective. Their permanent collection remains a strength.

Lynne: From the artist side, the Walker mattered most when it behaved like a neighbor…studio visits, residencies, letting the mess in. Big white walls are great; porous walls are better.

Mathew (TELL): How can Katherine’s history help us think differently about what we’re building now?

Katherine: We’ve done this before…successfully. That should energize us. Embrace external influence without being ruled by it. Keep the weirdness. Support the maintenance layer.

Lynne: And codify what works: micro grants, shared fabrication resources, sliding scale gallery models, a living registry of artists that curators can actually use. WARM’s slide file was primitive…but it got women on walls.

Mathew (TELL): Could parts of the book be a creative brief back to that balance?

Katherine: The world’s changed, but the principles travel through time.

Mathew (TELL): Any “Other TELLs” we should dig into?

Katherine: Hair and Nails. The Walker’s permanent collection. Historically: Artpolice…internationally relevant, weird, and strong; lots of copies archived at the Minneapolis Public Library.

Lynne: And talk to the people who kept the lights on…installers, coordinators, the “glue.” Scenes are held together by folks whose names aren’t on the poster.

Mathew (TELL): Amazing. Do you have images/ephemera we can use?

Katherine: I’ll pull some. Posters, Artpolice issues. I can “peek over” a big painting for a portrait.

Lynne: I can scan a few WARM newsletter pages and a checklist from the erotic show…nothing salacious, just the proof that it happened and who did the work.

Mathew (TELL): Perfect. We are on for tomorrow at the State Fair? And yes, we’ll brave the Fine Arts building together. My husband…the critic’s corner will have opinions. I keep thinking of all the “batter” I ate at the fair! Eight kinds of batter!

Katherine: On for the fair! I’m not sure how many kinds of batter we can find, but the Fine Arts building is more fun than donuts.

Lynne: Donuts are ephemeral. Good critique lasts all year.