A Conversation with Katherine Goertz

In her new book, An American Outpost: The Minnesota Art Scene, 1840–1989, art historian Katherine H. Goertz reveals the surprising history of art in the Midwest. Far from a forgotten backwater, Minnesota was a hotbed of artistic innovation, a magnet for famous artists, and home to one of the world's most impressive private art collections.

I sat down with Goertz to discuss the surprising discoveries from her seven years of research, from the overlooked influence of collector T.B. Walker to the persistent "inferiority complex" that shaped the local art community for over a century. What follows is a look into a history that proves you don't have to be New York or Paris to be a force in the art world. Enjoy. -Laura

 

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Laura Laptsevitch: I was curious, as you researched, because I know this had to take a long time: was there some research that surprised you?

Katherine Goertz: Oh, so much.

I thought James J. Hill was going to be a lot more important, and T. B. Walker very quickly took center stage as a collector in that entire chapter.

I thought the Minneapolis Institute of Art was going to be a lot more important—and it’s not that it’s not important as an institution—but the Walker kept coming back, and coming back, and coming back. Even that stupid Rembrandt painting kept coming back!

I thought Clement Haupers was going to be more integrated into the narrative—and it turned out to be Cameron Booth.

When I started researching the number of famous artists who came to the Twin Cities in the ‘80s to teach or guest lecture at MCAD, or do performances…it turned out it was everyone. Every time I look for an artist, I’m like, “Oh, this incredibly obscure Dutch performance artist couldn't possibly have done a performance,” but yeah, he did it in two places. The Walker and Film in the Cities. Everything was surprising.

 

 

Film in the Cities calendar for September 1982. Photo courtesy of the Walker Art Center.

 

LL: How did you go about research, and how long did this project take?

KG: It took seven years with a three-year break in the middle. So, essentially four years. The first quarter of the book was written over the first two years. And then the last 75% was written the next two years after the break.

I went everywhere here for archives, and then I had to go to Washington, D.C., and New York. And I really would've liked to have gone to Los Angeles, but I couldn't swing it, so there's a little bit of something that might be in Los Angeles archives that didn't make it into the book.

 

LL: When you went to New York and D.C., what did that look like going into the archives?

You just text or email them and say, “Can I see your archives?” And for places like the MET, you probably either need to have an introduction from somebody who's a known art historian, or you need to have a business card with “curator” with an institution after your name. But archives in general are very open. So as a normal person, you can just go in. The Walker was incredibly helpful. The Walker archives, as far as I know, are open.

But a lot of these archives, they really just want people to come and look at their stuff. In Washington, D.C., I went to the Archives of American Art, and it's the same thing. You just have to email ahead and say what you want to look at and give them a couple weeks' notice if possible. Make an appointment, and they'll come let you look at their archives. It's amazing.

 

LL: What were you hoping to find, say, and speak about Minnesota in writing this book?

KG: I actually wrote the book while I was doing the research, so I would do research and write a few paragraphs about what I just researched. A lot of that disappeared as I wrote. I did research the entire time. 

The narrative just grew completely organically, and I didn't have any expectations, except for the things that surprised me. I thought Clement Haupers would be a centerpiece, and then he just kind of fell away, and Cameron Booth took his place. What really quickly became a central point [Minnesota’s perception of itself in a larger art world] is the inferiority complex—that became a central part of the narrative, and it never stopped.

And then, of course, ties to Paris, the same ties to New York and Paris. They just happened organically. 

My goal was really not to prove “we’re just as good as New York or Paris,” because that’s pointless. And also, we’re not as important as New York or Paris; we’re just not. It’s okay. But I think my goal with the book was just to tell a bunch of interesting stories and for it to form into a narrative that had historical significance and was entertaining to read and a most accurate representation of the history.

 

LL: I noticed there is an underlying theme of Minnesota trying to keep up with a larger global art scene and art market and a feeling that it's the underdog or trying to establish itself as a cultural center. Where do you think Minnesota sits, then, in Minneapolis, kind of in that context?

KG: Oh, it’s so hard right now. In the ‘80s, we were on the art circuit. There was this rotation of New York–Los Angeles–Minneapolis–New York–Los Angeles–Minneapolis. And now there’s none of that reciprocation from the country. There isn’t even an art scene in New York. I mean - there’s an art scene in New York, but it's not making connections in the way it was in the ‘90s.

One thing that happened: there was a strong video arts scene, experimental, digital, video, and video arts. There was a little bit of a performance art scene here too.

These artists had set up relationships specifically with The Kitchen in New York—the experimental performance arts space. So that relationship is what brought a lot of very famous performance artists here.

 

Entrance to The Kitchen at 484 Broome Street, December of 1978, Patrick Hinely, Work/Play. Courtesy of The Kitchen 

 

Another one is MCAD.

MCAD, starting in the ‘70s, just started inviting very famous artists to come and be guest lecturers, have a residency, or teach a semester, and they would do it.

Then the Walker had the same kind of thing, on even higher levels.

The Walker would invite somebody to do a performance piece or to do a lecture. Then that artist would show up at Film in the Cities, or UC Video, or Rifle Sport, or other spaces around the Twin Cities.

You could just talk for days about weird things that happened.

 

LL: When I was reading, what stood out to me was the number of artists that were from Minnesota that would go off to Paris or New York and come back.

KG: It was very common in the United States. Well, actually, everywhere in the world.

At a certain point in the 1920s, everyone went to Paris. And if they didn’t go to Paris, they went to New York. Then they would come back because it's really hard to be an artist in Paris. And it’s really hard to be an artist in New York in the ‘20s. It's expensive. When Cameron Booth came back after being a very successful artist in New York, he didn't like the way New York smelled like urine.

So, you come back to Minneapolis because you might be able to establish a career in a smaller pond. And then you end up establishing an art scene.

 

LL: The establishment of art galleries and museums here was a huge deal, thanks to the wealthy patrons we had. What do you think the significance of James J. Hill and T.B. Walker is, and what is their contribution to Minneapolis and where we are today?

KG: Well, J.J. Hill is, of course, St. Paul. His works are in the Mia. He was fairly well-known as a collector, but he was definitely a small fish in the American collecting pond. You can see his works, so he still has a legacy.

But T.B. Walker… He had possibly the largest private art collection in the world. It’s hard to tell, but he’s definitely a contender. And again, even if 75% of the collection were fakes, that's still a massive, important collection of real stuff.

 

Walker Art Gallery; T.B. Walker on the Grand Stairway, 1925. Courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society

The art collection was visited by 90,000 people a year. That supported the idea that Minneapolis is a city where you can go and see world-class art. A lot of it was fake, but we didn’t know that back then.

What is really important about T.B. Walker is that after he died, it became the Walker Art Center, when the Federal Art Project got ahold of it and turned it into a symbol of community art in America.

Then, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, [the Walker] started becoming the center of American, progressive, and innovative art. In the ‘70s, they got on the video arts scene the second it became a thing—way before the Whitney, way before anyone else. They started inviting all these weird artists. They are a large part of why Minneapolis got so much attention.

 

LL: Do you think Minnesota did a good job at representing some of our underrepresented communities?

KG: In the ‘70s, they did an okay job. Before that, they tried a little bit and failed spectacularly.

In terms of feminist art, and in terms of women’s art across the board, we did a pretty good job in the ‘70s. In considering women artists (as professionals with an asterisk)—and I’m talking about like the 1840s to maybe 1950—I can’t completely say that. As Minnesota artists started getting real attention, women artists were kind of pushed back as, “Well, they, they’re not the ‘real’ artists. The ‘real’ artists are the men who are now taking attention.”

So I’d say before the 1970s, it’s mixed. 

We have lots of women artists, and then several who are fairly significant. Clara Mairs is kind of the sleeper hit of the Minnesota art scene—she had an interesting and really attractive and really skilled style. Then in the ‘70s (in terms of the feminist art scene), it was New York, San Francisco, and then us.

 

Clara Mairs, Clara and Clem, 1930. Oil on Canvas, 30 1/4 x 24 in. Courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society.

 

LL: There were moments where you mentioned Minnesota being very conservative, and that made things difficult to elevate the art that we had here. Could you say more?

KG: There’s art you will accept to look at, and then there’s art you will buy. 

It’s not like people were yelling about nudes in the street…there were a couple of people who were. But they were generally presented as “kooks” in the press. I think it presents more as, “Oh, my, you’re Minnesotan, so you can’t do this weird art,” or “We're going to buy in New York, which does the weird art, because New York has the right to do the weird art.”

It’s that kind of double standard of conservatism, rather than a prudish conservatism. 

I think the idea that you should really appreciate local art but buy “real” artists not from here is a double standard that has continued.

And the idea that if you do buy from here, you should probably buy one of the “famous ones” who are a little less weird, or weird in a way that they were in the ‘70s. 

Yes, because we’re still Minnesota, we’re still the Midwest—conservatism but with lots of complications.

 

LL: Is there a particular chapter that you're the most proud of?

KG: I really like the T.B. Walker chapter, mostly because of all that digging I did on the Rembrandt. I'm very proud of that. I really enjoyed the ‘80s chapters. “The American Boom: The Rise of American Abstraction”

My least favorite is the Federal Art Project chapter. There's nothing wrong with it. It’s just that I like weirder art and weirder stories.

The ‘50s, the ‘40s, the ‘50s, the ‘60s, “The American Boom,” and “The Rise from the Abstraction”—that was the hardest.

 

Cameron Booth, Summer Solstice, 1954. Oil on Canvas, 40 x 59 7/5 in. Courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society.

 

LL: There’s so much abstraction.

KG: Oh, something I'm really proud of is Eleanor Harris—essentially finding her. She was a perfectly skilled artist who went into abstract expressionism before it was a thing. And several years before anybody else. 

I like the “Cool Images, Youth Activism, and Intermedia” chapter. That was really fun. 

And then, I liked chapter 16 “Alternative View Expressions and Alternative Art.” That's my least favorite and my several favorites.

 

LL: What do you think the value is of telling that story, even if it sits in a context that is separate from some other cities that have a longer history or some bigger names? What's the value in telling the story?

KG: Well, as art historians, we’d love more forgotten stories. This is our whole job.

So as an art historian, it’s incredibly valuable. I wish I could read books about every art scene in the United States. Somebody told me the other day that Fargo has this exciting art scene. I’m like, “I would like to know about that.” I don't necessarily believe you, but I would like to know.

Every bit of information you can add to the narrative of art history as a whole has incredible value. And especially if it's interesting and has pretty pictures. ◼︎ 

 

Katherine H. Goertz is an art historian with a background in the history of art exhibition and in the history of printmaking. She is currently the curator and registrar of the art collection of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library at Saint John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota, where she works with works of art dating from the fifteenth century to the twentieth. To learn more about Katherine H. Goertz's book, An American Outpost: The Minnesota Art Scene,1840–1989, visit aftonpress.com. You can purchase your own copy on the publisher's website or amazon.