Panel wrestles with future of Minnesota Capitol’s paintings

MANKATO, Minn. (AP) – In the 1905 painting, “Treaty of Traverse des Sioux,” which hangs in the state Capitol, a Dakota chief and the United States Indian commissioner shake hands under a canopy of tree branches, the very image of amity.



But a fraught history lurks behind the harmonious facade.



With the agreement, the Dakota were forced to cede nearly all of their land in Minnesota, 21 million acres, for 7.5 cents an acre. The government kept more than 80 percent of the payment and eventually went back on a provision to set up two reservations.



Gwen Westerman, a Dakota scholar and Minnesota State University professor, said the work is a romanticized version of an event its painter, David Francis Millet, had not attended.



“And what we know specifically about that event and the treaty of 1851 makes that particular interpretation of it problematic,” she told The Free Press of Mankato.



At the same time, the treaty is a major piece of history that opened up the bulk of southern Minnesota to European settlement. And it’s seen as a major cause of the U.S.-Dakota War in 1862.



Westerman, one of 15 people selected to come up with recommendations about the Capitol’s art, doesn’t want these paintings destroyed, and she doesn’t want them forgotten.



“There is a place for these kinds of stories so we don’t forget,” she said.



But she’s not sure if prominent display in the state Capitol is the right place for them. At the same time, advocates for keeping the paintings front and center argue moving them would be tantamount to censorship.



“The politically correct thinking today is that white men didn’t properly respect the Indians in these paintings,” New Ulm resident George Glotzbach said. “But history being what it is and artists being what they are, this is what they thought and said in their paintings at the time.”



A massive $310 million Capitol renovation project is giving the state an opportunity to rethink the building’s art. Most of the nearly 60 works were created between 1903 and 1906, so the art preserves that era’s view of history.



Those views have changed, and the Legislature is taking this question around the state: Should the art change, too?



These decisions will be especially relevant to south-central Minnesotans. The treaty negotiation site is just north of St. Peter at a river crossing used by Dakota and French fur traders. The painting “Attack on New Ulm,” which portrays an opening skirmish in the Dakota attack on New Ulm, hangs in a Capitol hearing room.



Paul Anderson, one of the committee’s three co-chairs, is used to finding common ground after 20 years on the Minnesota Supreme Court.



At public meetings around the state, Anderson has heard plenty of contradictory ideas, and he’s considering them together, weighing them against each other. That’s as true of the events the paintings depict as it is of the works themselves.



Take “Attack on New Ulm.”



“Really, what it was was a strategic battle by the Dakota,” he said. “They had to get New Ulm if they were to fulfill their strategy” of driving white settlers back to Fort Snelling.



He can also see it from the other perspective – as a “heroic defense of a settlement.”



“We’re not going to rewrite history, come off being politically correct,” Anderson said. “This is a once-in-a-century opportunity to review what we have.”



He can see the value in adding interpretation to “Attack on New Ulm.”



“Maybe you don’t just get rid of a painting like this, but interpret it so it does justice to both sides,” he said.



Still, the art subcommittee’s discussion isn’t, for the most part, about whether to get rid of these paintings; it’s about where they should be placed and with what accompanying information.



As Rep. Diane Loeffler, also a co-chair, put it, “Would you rather learn it at the Capitol or do you want to learn at the museum?”



Loeffler, a Minneapolis Democrat, said it’s been instructive to see what other states have done.



“It appears there’s a theme. Most try and select artwork that tells stories that are unifying and celebrate attributes of their state, its people and their accomplishments that all can be proud of,” she said.



The more difficult stories are sometimes told in a history museum, she said, where there are more opportunities to parse history’s complexities.



Minnesota’s art, though, goes a different route. Much of the art honors the state’s Civil War veterans – there are six such paintings in the Governor’s Reception Room alone.



“That was a conscious choice to celebrate (Minnesota’s role in the Civil War) and about our interactions between settlers and Native Americans,” she said. “We have almost no art that tells any story from 1910 on.”



A theme of inclusiveness could mean that some of the Capitol’s controversial paintings would be moved to less-visible locations.



Loeffler said the art committee has heard “strident and very emotional stories” from Native Americans and others who said some of the works “make some Minnesotans feel less a part of Minnesota.”



“There are some spaces that are more honored and more visible than others,” she said.



For example, the 1905 painting “Father Hennepin at the Falls of St. Anthony” depicts a Native American woman shirtless. Loeffler wonders if the Governor’s Reception Room is the right place for it.



“Its placement there is particularly challenging because when the governor is having press conferences you see it with no interpretation,” she said. Native Americans in the room may be distracted and jarred by the depiction, Loeffler said.



Where Anderson can render a dispassionate analysis, descendants of Dakota or European settlers can feel as if more is at stake – their very identities, even.



Glotzbach readily admits he’s not neutral. His great-grandmother, 8 or 9 during the U.S.-Dakota War, was inside the barricades in New Ulm when the Dakota attacked.



“I’m not going to be the one-man decider,” he said. “We’re all fortunate for that.”



But he said moving paintings because some find them objectionable is censorship.



“If you take these things down and put them in the basement never to be seen again, you remove a great teaching moment,” he said. Modern interpretations can be added to these paintings, letting visitors make up their own mind about the events they portray, he said.



Speaking about the Civil War paintings, Minnesota National Guard Maj. Gen. Rick Nash suggested something similar during testimony before the art committee on Dec. 7.



“If a painting or bullet-riddled flag can impress upon our citizens and elected leaders not to take up arms, then they have served a noble public role,” he said.



Westerman, the MSU professor and a Dakota woman, brings her own personal connection. When art depicting Dakota was repeatedly referred to as “Native American” art, she objected.



“I said, ‘No, this is art that reflects Dakota history. This is not just some nebulous Native American subject,” she said. “That says we need to provide a much richer context for these works.”



Simple labels, such as those seen in a museum, aren’t enough, she said. Minnesotans of all ages visit their Capitol and not everybody reads the labels, she said.



In “Eighth Minnesota at the Battle of Ta-Ha-Kouty (Killdeer Mountain),” Minnesota soldiers are shown shooting into a group of mounted Dakota. But it wasn’t a battle, Westerman said. It was a massacre.



“Even soldiers who wrote about this talked about how horrendous it was,” she said.



And there is plenty of evidence about how people, especially children, are affected by the images they see every day, Westerman said.



“What is the environment that we want in the state Capitol that reflects and supports all Minnesotans?” she said.



Anderson, the former justice, said the idea that these paintings reopen a historical wound is on the table.



“We would be unfair to both sides if we didn’t acknowledge that it is on the table and must be discussed,” he said.



The art committee is expecting to release a preliminary report in January, but it’s “not going to answer all the questions that people want to have answered,” Anderson said. The panel’s final recommendations aren’t expected until late summer, he said.



Though they don’t say which way the panel is leaning, its members emphasize their recommendations won’t be extreme.



“It has to be clear,” Loeffler said, “that absolutely no one has talked about ever hiding, destroying or putting under covers any of this art.”



“It always has been about where and how (to show the art) and interpretation.”



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Information from: The Free Press, http://www.mankatofreepress.com

