Dayton Hudson Faculty Fellows: Ann Markusen

Ann Markusen, Professor, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs
Dayton Hudson Faculty Fellow, 2006-2007

Creating Missing Arts Space for Minnesota's Native Americans

In cities, suburbs and small towns across Minnesota, civic leaders and policymakers are turning to the arts as means of bringing communities together, bridging cultures, revitalizing downtowns and inner city neighborhoods, and addressing community problems from youth disaffection and out-migration to attracting new residents. Minnesota's Native American communities, both in the cities (especially Minneapolis and Duluth ) and on reservations, produce and harbor many artists and diverse artistic practices. Too few of them, however, earn a living on their artwork or are able to use their work to build community or solve community problems.

Professor Markusen and Anishanaabe writer and playwright Marcie Rendon will study the causes and consequences of the conspicuous absence of artistic spaces (what they call "missing art space") in Minnesota's Native communities, evaluate and showcase those that do exist, and develop ideas for doable initiatives that will create more such spaces and enable artists to use them.

For this project Markusen and Rendon will compare Minnesota's Native arts spaces and artists' experiences with those of other Native communities in the US (especially in the southwest), interview Minnesota's Native artists about their personal experiences, and interview Native and non-Native community leaders and managers who are in a position to create venues for the arts in new or existing spaces.

These "missing spaces" - places where Native artists can come together to learn from each other and to meet their publics, where young and aspiring artists can learn from more accomplished Native artists, and where artists can help solve community problems through artistic expression and creativity - are the subject of this project. This project fits into the Design Center's mission to make communities more healthy and active through attention to the location and design of physical space.

Result: What is Authentic? Reflections on Native American Art in Community and Regional Development by Ann Markusen, Andrea Martinez and Marcie Rendon, a paper for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning Annual Meetings, October, 2007

 





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