(enchanting music) - Hello, and welcome to Prairie Pulse.

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll hear music from Andrew McFarland.

But first joining me now is our guest, executive director of the North Dakota Museum Of Art in Grand Forks and, Matthew Wallace of course.

Matthew, thanks for joining us today.

- Thank you for having me.

- As we get started, Matthew, we always ask folks tell us a little about yourself and maybe where you're originally from and your background.

- Sure, sure.

So I grew up, my family had a little farm in near Warwick, North Dakota which is 20, 25 miles south of Devils Lake and, you know attended school out there and ultimately went to UND and after, kind of bouncing around to, from major to major I settled in English and got my BA from UND in Literature.

- Well, you recently took over the reigns at the museum.

When did you take over and how are things going so far?

- This is my second week on the job.

(gentlemen laughing) I mean, I started, I think the official date was March 15th so very, very fresh to this, but I've been with the museum since 2004.

So I've been there for a number of years.

- What role did you have prior to the executive director?

- Sure, I started as the director of rural arts initiative, which is a state funded program through the state legislature.

In 2004, they came up with a little bit of money for us to investigate bringing arts into rural communities around the state.

So it started in, like I said in 2004 where we would curate exhibitions and take them to little towns all over North Dakota and the size it really didn't matter.

It could be 80 people or 5,000 people.

And we would install these exhibitions in these communities and they would stay there for about two weeks and become their community project.

And then two to three weeks later, we'd come back, we'd pack that show up take it to another town and install them, you know wherever the community had space so it could be in a empty storefront, it could be the very first place we ever installed a show.

I think in 2004 was the Masonic Temple in Crosby, North Dakota.

And if anybody's been to Crosby, you know you get up to Northwest corner of State and you look over here and you can see Canada and you look over here and you can see Montana.

So it's way up in the corner and but just a wonderful little community, great way to kick off that program, so.

- Well, of course you took over from a long time executive director, museum founder, I believe Laurel Rueter.

Can you talk about her legacy?

- Oh, absolutely.

I think if anyone knows, Laurel knows that she has put 50 years of her life into building the arts in North Dakota and you know, what a humbling position to get into because knowing all that she has done, you know starting the museum from a student gallery and taking it to what it is today, Laurel has had a global impact on the arts.

And I've been very fortunate enough to travel with her and be a part of exhibitions that she's taken around and and brought to North Dakota as well.

And one time in particular, we were in a theater in New York and we walk in and the gentleman handing program says, looks and he looks, he looks again and finally says, "Laurel Rueter".

And she turns says, yes, oh, I've always wanted to meet you.

I know you.

So you never knew who you'd run into that would know Laurel so.

- So go back to how was the museum founded and of course when.

- Sure, so Laurel started it in the 1970s.

She was a graduate student, in the English department at UND.

And my understanding is her advisor and the head of the student union said, hey, we have a little extra money, what would you like to do with this?

And she said, well why don't we start a student gallery up on the third floor?

And so it started as a student gallery on the third floor and slowly expanded into what we are today.

But in between there we moved over to the women's gymnasium.

So in the, probably in the late eighties, early nineties, the women's gymnasium was not being used and they brokered the deal with UND, if they got the money to do the renovations they could use the facility as a museum.

So architect was hired out of Albuquerque and came in redesigned the whole building.

And in 1989, I believe it was 1990, they moved into that space.

And then, you know, in 1996, the museum separated from the university and became a private not for profit as so as we are today.

- Okay, so what is the role and the mission of the North Dakota Museum of Art?

- Well, one of the things that museum focuses on is bringing or developing this conversation between, you know national and international artists and our audience and bringing exhibitions that we may not see in the state to North Dakota.

So showing contemporary work and kind of by that, we mean, you know, for the most part 1970s to today and living artists, you know, some artists who are still living, that's not to say we we do not show exhibitions by artists who have passed away because we certainly do that as well.

But our primary focus is bringing contemporary artwork here and that can be you know, original artists as well, so.

- So what exhibits are currently on display and maybe what are some of the future exhibits you have?

- Sure, right now we have an exhibition called, From the Collection of Anonymous.

And this is a gentleman who has purchased over I wanna say about a hundred artworks for the museum's permanent collection and would just like to be anonymous in this endeavor.

And probably over the last 10 years has purchased around a hundred works of art for the museum.

So we are showing a portion of those works right now, and that's prints and it's paintings and some sculpture as well.

So it's a really diverse body of work.

We also just opened up an exhibition by Jim Dow.

Who's a photographer out of Boston.

And Jim is known for, one of the things he's known for is his commission.

The museum commissioned him starting in 1981 to photograph folk art in North Dakota because we were doing an exhibition but much of the work was too big and too permanent to move to North Dakota.

So, Jim came in and spent the next 20 years coming and going starting photograph folk art and then moving to architecture, you know those things that people make in their their shops in the winter times, snow, hay bale sculptures, so on and so forth.

So we're opening that exhibition of his work this week.

And then of course upstairs in the mezzanine gallery is a permanent exhibition and it's called Barton's place.

And Barton was an artist who showed in North Dakota in 1989.

He came here for his first exhibition of the new space and fell in love with the state and over this 30 year friendship he had with Laurel they'd have this conversation about what he was gonna do with his New York apartment.

You know, he had, you know, a brother, but that was it in the family.

And it was filled from top to bottom with African artwork and animals and all kinds of curiosities.

And so I think one evening with those two getting together they decided they would just move the whole apartment to North Dakota and it would be this 21st century artist studio.

So people could see how a New York artist was living at the time.

So when Barton passed away in 2012, we went out, I'd say probably about six or eight staff members went out, packed up his apartment into two trucks drove it back to North Dakota and installed it as it was when he passed away.

So that's an exhibition you'll always find up in the mezzanine gallery.

- Yeah, sure.

Well, for nearly 50 years you've been in business, so to speak, what are some of the most important exhibits that have been on display at the museum?

- Sure, sure.

One that always comes to mind for me is an exhibition that Laurel had curated called, "The Disappeared," which was an exhibition about the people who disappeared under military dictatorships throughout south and central America.

So this exhibition probably contained 20 to 30 artists from I think, six or seven different countries.

And we opened it here in Grand Forks, 14 of the artists came and then it was supported in part by the Landon foundation out of Santa Fe.

And they supported the touring of the exhibition.

So I was fortunate enough a few other staff members to go to five places in South America and help install the show there.

So I did a big international tour and then I came back and did five cities in the US as well.

And I think one of the greatest things that ever came out of this was the New York times review of that while it was in New York city.

And they just said, you know why is this exhibition coming from a curator in North Dakota and not one of our own?

And, you know, he sort of put it out there that you know we need to start paying attention on what's going on in this place, in North Dakota, so - Great, so let's talk about some of the programs maybe you have.

Do you have an arts program for children?

- Yeah, we're just gearing up for that right now.

I mean, it's been a hard two years with with COVID and, you know I think people were getting burnt out of trying to do classes online and probably had enough of that.

So everyone's kind of looking forward to this but we do 11 weeks of children's art camps.

And so nine to three every day you go for a week straight.

And then, you know, when that one's over a different artist comes in and teaches a different class.

And those usually sell out very quickly.

And then during the wintertime, what we have is something called family day in which it's one Saturday, a month and it's free and open to the public and the parents, or grandparents can come in and we set up art making stations based on exhibitions.

And so there's about six different activities that you can do and just from ten to twelve.

And so there's just something to get the family out of the house in the wintertime and provide something for them to get them through these long winter days.

- Sure, what about your artists residency program?

- Yeah, so that was, we have a place called McCanna House and McCanna, it was a town north of Larimore started by the McCanna family and Mrs. McCanna was a supporter of the museum.

And so she would spend three months a year volunteering in the spring while she was here and she left her farmstead to the museum and the house it's on a 1920s, built in 1920s designed by the architect, DeRemers.

So he's also architect who did the state capital and many many buildings around North Dakota and she wanted it to be an artist and residence program.

So we opened it in the summer and artists come starting in June and go through October and stay for two to weeks at a time just enjoying that solitude and quietness and just making art and developing projects.

And so on.

- Let's talk about some of the things you've got at the museum there.

What is the garden path?

- Garden path was something we started a few, oh I don't know, maybe five, six years ago.

These were stone paths laid out, and as a way of generating general operating, you know that's always the hardest thing to fundraise for, you know, grants are often kind of centered around programming, but no one really wants to pay for someone to run those programs.

So what we did was we had these stones donated and they go, they circle around the entry way of the museum and guests can pick a stone that they want and give us an image and we'll take it and have it engrave with that image or word or name or whatever they want, sort of memorial to have, you know someone in their family or themselves.

And then we take that money and we put it into an endowment in which we can use that the proceeds from that endowment to help pay for salaries and other sort of general operating expenses.

- Sure, well, so how many employees do you have and how are you funded you?

- Yeah, good question.

Right now we're two, five, now we've kind of made a few more hires and I think we're up to seven.

We have, our cafe is back up and running against we just hired a new chef, all new white staff.

So they're part of the, the museum team as well.

And we often say like, you know, people come to the the museum to see the artwork but then they go and have lunch or they come to the cafe and then go and see the artwork.

So we really try to integrate both the cafe and what we do in the galleries together.

- So, and talk about your permanent collection, what's in the permanent collections.

- So right now we have, I'm guessing it's about 2,500 artworks and it is everything from paintings sculptures to ceramic pots to quilts.

It really just runs the gamut.

Some of the work that we come in after, you know, Barton I was telling Barton Benish when he passed away and wanted to leave his apartment to the museum.

He, one of the things, one of the reasons why he did that, he said because there was no African artwork in North Dakota at that time.

And he wanted his African artwork to be a place or his apartment to be a place where people could experience African artwork.

And so with that, we've had a few more gifts and I think we've grown that collection of African artwork to about 350 pieces.

We have, like I said, extensive ceramics but it comes from artists regionally, locally and nationally and internationally.

So usually when we do a show, we try to purchase a few pieces from the artists as well for the collection and that way they're there forever.

And you know, it's a win-win for both the museum and for the artists.

- You know, we often hear about a permanent collection, you know how has it decided what's gonna be a permanent collection for a museum?

- Sure, so we've had a collection committee and we look at, you know, if it fits what we want to collect and that's, you know living artists and that's, you know artists who are, you know, working day in and day out right now, artists that we've shown.

So we really wanna highlight, you know, our local and regional artists as well.

So we've got a very extensive collection from them, but you know, as we say, we also focus international and national exhibitions and artists.

And so whenever we can work that out, that we can, you know get a piece into the collection, we'll do that.

So for example, next exhibition we have coming up is an exhibition called, Hanging Tree Guitars.

And this is out of North Carolina and it is a Folk Laris and photographer who'd kind of spends his time promoting and aiding old blues musicians that had fallen through the cracks.

And one of those musicians is a gentleman by the name of Freeman Vines who is a guitar maker and visual artist and musician.

And Mr. Vines was given rough cut slabs of wood from a known lynching tree out of North Carolina.

And he wanted to provide a voice for the the person who was lynched in this tree by, you know, at this time.

And so he, he ticked these and he started making guitars out of them.

And he was also interested in a very particular sound.

And he says, he's never been able to recreate that sound but he's been working on this and the photographer will, has done a lot of great photographs of his work in the area and whatnot, so, when we open that show, we will take a print from him.

We're gonna purchase a print for our collection in exchange for him coming up and giving a lecture.

- Okay, We're at of time.

But if people want more information, where can they go?

- Yeah, museums website, ndmoa.com.

- All right, Matthew, thanks for joining us today.

- Thank you.

- Stay tuned for more.

(enchanting music) Andrew McFarland is a true musician who composes, arranges and performs.

His instruments of choice are guitar and bass guitar.

But his studies at Minnesota State University Moorhead have provided him with a strong musical foundation.

(guitar music playing) (guitar music playing) (guitar music playing) (guitar music playing) Well, that's all we have on Prairie Pulse this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(lighthearted music) - [Narrator] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie public.