The M reopens with new exhibit

Jake Spitzack
Staff Writer

After more than three years of closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic and major remodeling, the Minnesota Museum of American Art is once again ready to welcome visitors. It reopens November 4 with a new exhibit, “Hazel Belvo: For Love,” and visitors can get a sneak peek at construction underway that will triple the museum’s exhibition space by early next summer. Belvo, an American painter, educator and women’s art advocate, will attend the opening and her son Briand will perform on jazz guitar. Guided tours and food will be available.

“The exhibit brings together some of her [Belvo’s] early abstractions made while living in New York in the ’60s, some sketches of her son Briand, and a body of work called the Love Drawings which were made while her son Joe struggled through a tragic illness when he was younger,” said M executive director Kate Beane. “Some people know Hazel as the wife of George Morrison, whose work we have a large collection of, but she is an amazing artist in her own right. Her body of work is inspired by her feminist worldviews, her children and her life as an educator.”

Belvo was a teacher and chair of fine arts at St. Paul Academy and Summit School for 17 years, and professor and chair of fine arts for 34 years at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where she is now professor emerita. The exhibit will be in the Nancy and John Lindahl Gallery, formerly known as the East Gallery, and will feature more than 60 paintings and drawings from Belvo’s 70-year career as an artist. Admission to the museum, as always, is free.

Born in Ohio, Belvo received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Minnesota and was a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Harvard University for two years. She has works in many private, public and museum collections, including the Steinway Collection in New York, the Bezalel Museum in Israel, the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, and the M. In 1976, she was a founding member of the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota, a feminist art collective.

Belvo still resides in Minnesota and spends part of the year teaching at the Grand Marais Art Colony. She is known for her 50-year exploration of Manidoo-giizhikens – a 400-year-old cedar known as the Spirit Tree – which stands on the Grand Portage Ojibwe Reservation on the shore of Lake Superior. Her most recent body of work is Spirit Tree: Honey Locust, a series of 18 large-scale paintings that pay tribute to a honey locust tree that stood behind the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. The tree was cut down when the museum embarked on an extension project. A selection of those paintings is included in “Hazel Belvo: For Love.”

While the museum has been dark in recent years, it has not been dormant. Much activity has been taking place behind the scenes on its expansion project.

“We closed our capital campaign earlier in the year and started construction this spring, so we’ve been busy focusing on the expanded gallery space,” said Beane. “For us it was really important to make sure we had adequate space for our permanent collection and to really make a home for ourselves.”

The M has operated at more than a dozen sites since it was founded in 1894 as the St. Paul School of Fine Arts. In 1927, it was formally incorporated and began collecting art for instructional purposes. In the 1940s, it expanded its collecting focus beyond instructional works and in the ’50s changed its name to the St. Paul Art Center and began a robust program of exhibitions. By 1969 it was nationally regarded for its exhibitions and educational programs and was renamed the Minnesota Museum of Art. In 1992, the museum added “American” to its name to reflect its focus on national and regional art. The M has at times lived in Jemne Building, Landmark Center and the former West Publishing building on Kellogg Boulevard, which was demolished in 2015-16. It moved to the Pioneer Endicott Building, 350 Robert St. N., in 2013 after four years without a permanent home.

While excitement surrounds the new exhibit and expanded building space, M staff haven’t forgotten the positive feedback they’ve received from the window and skyway exhibits they began installing shortly after the M closed its doors in spring 2020. They will continue installing window exhibits for passersby to enjoy, and new skyway exhibits as well. The most recent window exhibit explored the historical and contemporary state of sleeping and being in bed and featured everything from a reconstructed bedroom to a hanging installation made with second-hand pajamas.

The M’s $14 million construction project includes renovating and restoring 17,300 square-feet of the Pioneer Endicott building which was built in 1871 and is a registered historic site. The museum will have 36,000 square feet of space when it’s complete, including 6,000 square-feet of gallery space. The project also includes refurbishing all of the Cass Gilbert stained-glass tiles in the ceiling. The project is partly funded by $10 million in bonding from the State of Minnesota last spring. Once complete, the M will reveal pieces from its 5,000-piece permanent collection, which includes new art as well as some that has been lying in wait since the gallery closed. The M also recently received a $400,000 direct appropriation from the State to cover operating costs and hire a Native American fellow. The museum is seeking volunteers to greet visitors into the gallery and will soon hire an officer manager. During the renovation, the museum is open 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Thurs.-Sun. For more information, visit mmaa.org.

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