Artworks of thirty-three artists, from the frontier days of Minnesota to the present, create a collection that explores the connection between Minnesota artists. This summer WAM resumes its commitment to presenting exhibitions focused on Minnesota art, artists, and subjects. Tenuous, Though Real, also highlights WAM’s commitment to supporting our local artists through collecting, preserving, and making accessible their work, which stands as a unique and important part of the Minnesota’s historical record.

In her 1976 survey, Minnesota Painting and Sculpture from 1820 to 1914, Rena Neumann Coen argued that the tie that binds Minnesota artists is neither a style nor even a characteristic, but rather “a tenuous, though real, sense of shared experience—an identification, however fleeting, with the Minnesota scene.” Not limited to works by artists born in Minnesota, the exhibition features works made in or after a time working in the territory or state. It features artists in the Weisman collection: Will Agar, Harriet Bart, Hazel Belvo, Karl Bethke, Cameron Booth, Alfred Thompson Bricher, Julie Buffalohead, Henriette Clopath, C. Fuller Cowles, Edwin Dawes, Jim Denomie, Alexis Jean Fournier, Linda Gammell, Gary Hallman, Theresa Handy, Edwin Holm, Stuart Klipper, Vesna Kittelson, Josephine Lutz Rollins, Clara Mairs, Sandra Menefree Taylor, George Morrison, Laura E. Migliorino, Donald Neal, Judy Onofrio, David Rathman, Thomas P. Rossiter, Paul Shambroom, John Snyder, Alec Soth, Jerome Thompson, Katherine Turczan, and Lucia Wiley.