Looking Back on 20 Years of MPLSART: Founder Emma Berg on Making a Scene

Emma Berg and artist Bill Beekman. All images courtesy Emma Berg.

Emma Berg is a fashion designer, original founder of MPLSART, and a former curator in the Minneapolis arts scene. Named one of Vita.mn’s most influential people in 2012, she has shown her designs at Mpls/St. Paul Fashion Week and the Walker Art Center. Now based in Brooklyn, New York, she blends her creative roots with leadership in tech strategy and portfolio management at J.Crew.

We talked to her about the earliest days and phase of MPLSART, from launch to sale, and caught up on where she is now.
 

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Katie Dohman: Take us back to when MPLSART was just an idea: What was the scene like?

Emma Berg: When I started MPLSART, my partner at the time [painter Ben Olson] and I weren’t seeing the coverage of the galleries and artists we thought were exciting. Whether our opinion was wrong or right, we felt the local coverage was stale and felt a new energy was needed to expose the work of people we knew and wanted to know. Add in my excitement around the street art popping up around Minneapolis—it felt important to build something that would shine a light on a new group of artists emerging, including the work of Deuce 7, whose one-shot paintings were showing up all around Bde Maka Ska. Artists such as Jennifer Davis, John Grider, Eric Inkala, and Amy Rice were doing something that I wanted to highlight.

 

Artists Jennifer Davis and Keegan Wenkman 

When Ben was first shopping around at galleries and where he could show, it was such a strange vibe. I remember going into a gallery and there didn’t seem to be any interest in seeing his work. We were naive or whatever, but at the same time, it wasn’t a welcoming space. We would go to shows and every time someone would ask, “How do you know the artists?” It was this feeling of, like, you couldn’t be there because you just loved art. And that was the flick in my mind–that [attitude] is not it. Like, how do we even get in this art scene, if every time we go somewhere someone asks who we know? It didn’t make any sense to me. I wanted to blow up the expectations of what that should be. I felt like, ‘How do we come at this completely differently from an anti-establishment sort of way?’

 

Artist Ben Olson

 

KD: What skills or interests did you have to launch a website?

EB: I had been working at Target in HR/Technology. They paid for the MCTC classes to learn HTML and JavaScript—and I learned because I wanted to make this thing. They didn't know that I’d use it for this side project for the next 10 years. It was just in this weird space of technology and wanting to do something, to crack something open. It just kind of happened.  

When I started the site, I had learned just enough to be dangerous. When the site first launched, everything was manually sized and hard-coded to make it fit just right and the focus was simple: One, a calendar with a curated selection of openings; two, a section for street art; and three, the marketing ploy, which was photos of the people on the scene, enticing them to visit the site post-weekend to check themselves out as well as everyone else who made an appearance.

 

Artist Jaime Carrera and musician Grant Hart

 

KD: What was your mindset at the time? 

EB: Everything felt possible. The energy felt like it would carry it all. 

There was BRLSQ screenprinting and the Warehouse District was actually a Warehouse District, with these big warehouse parties. The other piece to the scene at the time is that you saw artists, musicians, and designers coming together and hanging out. Which is unique in having those large events that can get pulled off, like [fashion designer] Anna Lee’s Voltage: Fashion Amplified. 

 

Anna Lee, founder of Voltage: Fashion Amplified and MNFashion with friend

 

KD: Tell us about your partnership with Kristoffer Knutson. How did you work together to bring the idea to life? What did you each bring to the table? 

EB: Kristoffer approached me about partnering on MPLSART a bit after its initial launch. To be honest, I was hesitant. I liked the freedom I had with running it on my own, but it wasn’t sustainable with how I had built it, and he was offering to invest in a rebuild that would ensure it could continue. He had ROBOTlove [on Lyndale] at the time, which was an enviable design store with a great aesthetic, and he had a great connection to the art scene. We brought in Seth Walker to help with the redesign and relaunched with a slick site in July of 2006 with a blowout party at Kingman Studios.  

 

Flyer for 2006 re-launch party

 

KD: You had a full-time job, you did fashion and art, you were on the scene. Was your plan to make MPLSART a business?

EB: I always assumed that it would be this underlying pet project. It was time spent out on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays on openings and then the updates. It wasn’t overwhelming, and of course, then I didn’t have a kid, and I had endless energy. It never made sense to me for it to be something that made money. I don’t know why; it just never was. 

After Kristoffer and I partnered there were conversations around ads, but It just didn’t resonate with me. It was started to be something there for people that got it and I didn’t want to change that trust. It always felt this was going to be this labor of love.

 

Writer Joan Erakit with friend

 

KD: What was your "why" behind the site, beyond your initial experiences on the scene? 

EB: I remember the first time we listed an opening in an apartment. We actually went to the apartment, there were like 21-year-old kids living there, and they had solid art and had done their work to get it up. It felt important to showcase art that wasn't ordained. 

I don’t know that it changed the dynamic beyond having this be a scene. I don’t think it sold anything more for struggling artists. It didn’t necessarily create the energy in a “I need to buy that piece” way. But, in some cases, it played an early hand in some artists’ careers to keep going and making great things. It’s like chicken or egg kind of thing. 

 

Gallerist and Founder of Public Functionary, Tricia Heuring

 

KD: What was the reception like to MPLSART and your work on it?

EB: There was a sense of curiosity about it and most people I talked with about it in its early years loved the vibe, though I know there was the contingency that found it cringe. 

In 2006 when we relaunched the site, people understood what it was. but when I first launched, I made business cards with a logo I created in Excel. I was at events, handing them out, and when I would ask people for their pictures, they freaked out. It [The concept of MPLSART] felt very foreign to everybody, and there wasn’t any sense of what it was. It was like, 'What are you doing?'

I was almost a voyeur. I was putting in my time. 

But it turned really quickly. It probably took half a year to nine months and started to spread and people were hearing about it. 

 

Artist and founder of Rogue Buddha, Nick Harper, with friend at Outsiders and Others Gallery

 

KD: What were some of your favorite memories or most consequential things you worked on? 

EB: The Color of the Sun Through the Pink of My Eyelids was a pop-up exhibit that was installed across from the Guthrie Theater, with all the work hung being pink. It was early spring, and being that close to the river the warmth of the pink art from five artists was welcoming. 

Love’s Laborers: We presold American Apparel garments and those garments were then ‘sent down an assembly line of artists and designers’ during a live event. Each creative would add their own touch to the piece, culminating into a unique wearable art piece. Once finished, the buyer was given the opportunity for an onsite photo shoot by duo Danica Andler and Joseph Kramm … with those photos later posted to the event’s recap, of course. 

The Relaunch Party: Centered around the painting of 40’s by a handful of artists, where most of the artists came to my home in LynLake to paint. We posted the pics, and opened up tickets—however, the twist was that the 40s were sold in brown bags, so a buyer had no idea which bottle they were going to get.

 

Handful of 40s sold during our relaunch party in 2006

Deuce 7 @ SooVac: Working with Deuce 7 for the SooVac exhibit in 2007 was incredible. Getting to see up close how he was creating, and then walking him through how the pieces would relate to each other and the varied sizes we’d ideally want to present to help him with sales. It was the balance between protecting an artist’s vision and ensuring they are presenting work that will help fund their next adventure.

 

Kristoffer Knutson and original founder of SooVac, Suzy Greenberg

 

KD: I remember you were curating art for Haus Salon in its early opening days—was that a MPLSART initiative? 

EB: Curating at Haus Salon and Fox Tax, though not directly connected with MPLSART, was definitely an outpost and allowed me to stay inspired in the art scene and continue various approaches to sell art.  

HotTea was set on creating this massive installation at Haus Salon, and hanging it was wildly complicated. It was an absurd conquest, and wonderfully inspiring. I’m so happy he came in big and that we were able to support his vision.

KD: What do you wish had gone differently or that you had done differently? 

EB: In hindsight, we didn’t spend that extra effort—just my own naivete, really—on inclusivity. It’s something I see in hindsight: I spent time building up a scene in which everybody I knew felt included, but we didn’t go further than our immediate reach. 

 

Deuce 7

 

KD: Have there been any lasting rewards?

EB: HotTea has shared many times: ‘You and Kristoffer gave me that first show and it was a fun one. It was so cool.’ I remember being like, 'This is the show we’re going to put here.’ And when I was having that conversation with everybody else, people would say ‘This doesn’t make sense, it won’t sell,’ and I was saying 'That doesn’t matter, he’s passionate, it’s great.’ Isaac Arvold lives half a mile from me in Brooklyn, and when he’s introducing me to someone new he’ll say, ‘Emma kept ragging on me to work on my art.’ Now he’s a creator. That’s rewarding when you get to see someone and something you did allowed them to follow a bit of their dream. 

 

Emma Berg, Was Berkley, and Kane X in BKLYN. Art in background by Clea Felien.

KD: What about following your own dreams?

EB: I think for me New York was always the dream. Target had done these massive layoffs and I was part of those layoffs, and the day I walked into Target knowing what might be coming, I decided: If that happens, I’m picking up and moving to New York. What I want here is still complicated and who knows how that might change—I just hit my 10-year mark. I left in 2015, when Katie Garrett and Blaine Garrett bought it. In that first five years I was having a baby, and trying to figure out New York, and I bought a home, so that’s crazy. Now I’m trying to get back a bit more into more art. With a five-year-old kid, I feel like I am seeing this glimpse of creativity and then of course there’s also my full-time career. 

 

MPLSART logo

 

KD: What’s it like seeing MPLSART still going strong, long after you’ve gone? 

EB: I am so proud of them for keeping it going this long. There’s part of me that hopes it keeps going to fill that in-between space. MPLSART was huge on the visuals for me, but I love that they’ve got more articles driving content and I do appreciate that extra critical lens. We had put the feelers out there for the sale because I had been doing a lot more fashion, and so I was spending less and less time on the site. And Kristoffer was worn down on taking the majority of the work. It made sense to to sell. We sold it for a dollar–it wasn’t meant to be this big scheme. It was more about who is going to love it and continue to carry it and make it feel like their own—treat it like family. I think they’ve done fantastic. ◼︎ 

 

This Q&A is part of series of articles about the fine folks that have helped make MPLSART what it is over the last two decades. Celebrate our 20th anniversary with us September 27th, 2025, at Southside Preservation Society. Please RSVP and we look forward to seeing your lovely faces at the party.