June 28, 2022
“This interview has been edited for length and clarity”: It’s a throwaway phrase, a quick way of indicating that a printed conversation has been pruned of the false starts, fillers, tangents, and rabbit holes that might have unfolded in the three-dimensional dialogue on which it’s based. The process of smoothing and shortening interviews is…
June 2, 2022
The Weisman Art Museum is pleased to present two new exhibitions opening in June: Capturing Change: The Urban Images of Berenice Abbott and Giovanni Battista Piranesi, opening June 3 in the Edith Carlson Gallery; and Bimiwetigweyaa — Tcubúhatceh (The Sound the River Makes Flowing Along / The Ripple and Roar of a Flowing Stream),…
April 19, 2022
In September 2021, the Texas Legislature adopted Senate Bill 8, which restricts access to abortion by allowing private citizens to sue service providers. Later in the fall, we commissioned several artists to create responses to the legislation. We opened the series with an image created by the artist Dread Scott that equated Texas governance…
April 15, 2022
After Progress An activist investor is leveraging his stake in Canadian Pacific to force the company into climate action, my friend Gudrun Lock tells me. This news overlays our walk through the patchwork of forest, park, and grassland that surrounds the CP-owned Shoreham Yards train and truck site in northeast Minneapolis. The air smells like…
March 21, 2022
Masks Are Welcome, But Not Required March 21, 2022: As of today, masks are welcome, but not required for visitors and staff at the Weisman Art Museum (WAM) and WAM Shop, in accordance with University of Minnesota policy and current public health guidance from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
November 23, 2021
Telling the Story of Kinship In my time doing research into my family history, I came across allegations that my great-grandmother died as a result of mental and physical health complications after an illegal and unregulated abortion. She’d already faced a lifetime of hardships. She was a social pariah in her small town, due to…
November 23, 2021
About the Series On September 1 2021, the Texas state legislature adopted State Bill 8, which allows private individuals to sue anyone aiding women in accessing abortions. We invited some of WAM’s past artists-in-residence to offer their reflections and commentary on this Texas law in images and/or text. Rachel Jendrzejewski chose to submit an image-only…
November 23, 2021
It’s fitting that Texas’ new abortion restrictions went into effect during the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack in the US. 9/11 and the subsequent, unending “War on Terror” inaugurated an era of surveillance that now seems inescapable. Technologies like facial recognition software have made possible the kinds of observation and social control…
November 23, 2021
About the Series On September 1 2021, the Texas state legislature adopted State Bill 8, which allows private individuals to sue anyone aiding women in accessing abortions. We invited some of WAM’s past artists-in-residence to offer their reflections and commentary on this Texas law in images and/or text. Nooshin Hakim Javadi chose to submit an image-only…
November 23, 2021
Resisting Shame “It is essential to emphasize that violence against women is a key element in this new global war, not only because of the horror it evokes or the messages it sends but because of what women represent in their capacity to keep their communities together and, equally important, to defend noncommercial conceptions of security…