Something happened in St. Paul today that’s noteworthy: The director of the Minnesota Museum of American Art, which closed in March, 2009, after years of financial difficulties, met with the public in a forum, just to answer questions about the museum’s future.
And in advance, the Pioneer Press published a Q & A with Kristin Makholm, who joined the museum in June 2009…
…faced with a program that had no building, virtually no staff and little money. A year and a half later, after seeing success with different outreach programs and exhibitions, including “Museum Without Walls,” in which the museum partners with other local institutions to show its art collections, Makholm is looking at fall 2015 as the museum’s reopening date.
It’s got to be tough to have the permanent collection, about 3,500 works, in storage for all that time, and try to maintain a constituency. And with little help: Last January, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that Makholm “is camping out in an office at the James J. Hill Reference Library in downtown St. Paul. She runs the museum with a part-time assistant, a cell phone, a laptop and moxie.”
Makholm did well to keep the museum’s presence alive, and garner press attention, too.
For this all to happen in generous Minnesota is still a bad sign. Granted, residents of St. Paul can easily visit the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center, but the MMAA was the only art museum in St. Paul.
Makholm was optimistic in the Q & A. Then again, she’s got to be.
Photo Credit: Courtesy St. Paul Pioneer Press