Minnesota state showed at the Smithsonian exhibition

In August, many Minnesota artists will be shown in the country’s capital. Exhibition Country Exhibitions: American craft cultivation August 22 is opened at the Smithsonian Museum of American Arts.

“Minnesota has inspired the entire idea of the exhibition,” said Mary Savig, head of coordinator at the Renoyick Show, a branch of the American Smithsonian Museum of arts and decorative arts.

Savig from Mankato, Minnesota, her mother raised the dairy farm in Tyler. It says that its youth are full of memories of the Mennisota State exhibition, as well as the provinces and the taste of Minnesota.

“I loved everything,” said Savig. “We have developed the entire project to investigate and cover the full national history of state exhibitions in a broader context of American art and culture, but Minnesota started with it, and therefore Minnesota is well represented in the exhibition.”

Savig says it is the first major exhibition to wipe the unique arts and crafts that American exhibitions are cultivated from the nineteenth century to the present.

In addition to many artworks from Minnesota, the Renoyick exhibition will display the famous “Big Tex” shoes from the State Gallery in Texas, a model of John Derry tractor by the artist Margareta Kapreira, based in Arizona, which is a normal butter cow from Iowa Sarah Pratt and many works of artists across the country.

Smithsonian seed

A large part of the exhibition is the art of Minnesota crop. The front and the center are the promotional image: a artwork for crops by Mininabolis Liz Shrebar.

Smithsonian assigned an artery to make the piece. It will appear at the Renoyek exhibition and on the cover of the exhibition catalog, as well as on loads, shirts, scarf, magnets and postcards.

To search at the exhibition, Savig returned to the Minnesota state exhibition in 2023, in the same year Schreiber made the memorial poster For the exhibition.

“This poster has lived in our offices here in the museum for some time,” Savig says. “I wondered whether Liz was able to design our stupidity in a similar way, because I just thought: the poster of the Minnesota state exhibition, it’s very beautiful. It is very ideal for the idea of linking agriculture to American art.”

Sherbar, who is it It is considered one of the leading figures in the art of cropsThe committee accepted last winter.

“I turned somewhat when I received this email,” says Shrebar. “I mean, I grew up in Virginia to go to these museums, so they are more exciting, and exciting for me, because a large part of my upbringing was able to jump on the train and go to the city and go to see all these things.”

Schrebyr says the Smithsonian team has specific ideas for artistic work, including blue tapes, roses, corn, cow of butter and spinning wheels.

“They really wanted the cow of the butter,” says Sherbar. “They really wanted to promote the craft fabric region and more, often, things that depend on females such as making quilt, sewing and spinning.”

Schrebyr only works with the natural colors of seeds and vegetable materials (instead of painting), so the blue bars are a challenge.

“There are no real real blue seeds.” “I have finished using small small flower petals (Nasit-no), I cut one by one for the blue bars.”

Savig says there will be an exhibition dedicated to crop art, including several pieces of the same “queen of seeds”, Lillian Kulton, which is He died in 2007 at the age of 95And her daughter, her colleague Crop artist Linda Polsen. Savig visited Paulsen’s house in Owatonna to see work personally.

“We have collected a group of celebrities, something that was well known,” says Savig. “The first picture is Richard Nixon. That was the first image made by Lillian Kulton in 1969, which revolutionized the category of crop art and a kind of this cultural pop it that makes him enjoy very popular today.”

Savig says that many presidential photos written by Colon and Polsen will be shown – including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama – because the exhibition coincides with the twenty -fifth anniversary of the United States.

There will also be Kulton’s photos of Prince, Willie Nelson, Andy Warhol, Parbra Streisand and Elvis. And showed it: Paulsen photos from Dolly Barton, Beettie White, Taylor Swift and Lin Manuel Miranda.

Beyond crops: from textiles to rosemåling

The representation of Minnesota in the exhibition exceeds the art of crops.

The historical association of Minnesota loaned a butter cartoon dress and 1965 designed by Wilma Ryan and wore by Princess Kay from the Milky Way Mary Ann Terud.

MHS also presented “27 Bones”, a pair of lace gloves decorated with the hands of the skeleton by the historic clothing designer that is based in Minneapolis as the headquarters of Kathleen Rettirt. The gloves were displayed at the Minnesota State exhibition in 2001.

There will also be “yggdrasil, the daughter of the farmer (the tree of life)”, a Fabric inspired by myth. In a blog post in December, Lavoor narrated that it presented the article in 2019 to the Fine Arts Competition at the Minnesota State Exhibition.

“It did not make this pieces,” he writes Lavoor. “I was sad about this refusal, but I am very happy to display it in the category of fabric in the creative activities building, where he received a blue tape and saw thousands of Fairgo – including Mary Savig.”

This piece is an honor for the father of Lavaor and his grandfather, who planted potatoes in the Red River Valley.

“The harvest of the abundant crops of the potatoes in 1952 helped her father in building the family’s home,” said Savig. “It is a beautiful texture. It uses this open technique called by this Norwegian weaver called Frida Hansen.”

Savig also chose “Tine”, a piece written by Ronna Thorson, an Edenian artist who works in the tradition of Scandinavian folk art in Rosemåling. “Tine” is a Norwegian traditional lunch box.

“One of the goals of the exhibition, more broadly, is to show these regional and cultural traditions that are part of the history of the unique migration of the state. So in Minnesota, we have this Scandinavian technique,” Savig says.

What about butter?

While sculptors will not be represented by Minnesota butter in the exhibition, Minnesota butter will appear.

Savig says they have received 800 pounds of butter from Associated Milk Producers, Inc. It is a cooperative in New ULM, which The butter provides Princess Kai of the Milky Way at the Minnesota State Gallery For sculptors at the Iowa State exhibition. (the 2002 Princess Kay from the Milky Way, Sarah Olson SchmidtHe is the Vice President of Marketing at Associated Milk Producers, Inc.).

The Smithsonian, Sarah Pratt, chose the main sculptor of the annual butter cow at the Iowa State, to create the cow for the exhibition.

“I know it’s very controversial,” says Savig about not choosing Minnesota butter sculptors. “It was very difficult to decide who would be our butter sculptor.”

The state exhibitions: The growing American crafts are opened on August 22 and will continue until September 7, 2026. Liz Cryber will attend the opening reception on September 18, and in a future history, a virtual studio tour will host her home in Minneapolis to the Smithsonian Museum of Art.