Let it snow. We can take it. We can go to Art in Bloom at Mia and enjoy more than 160 fabulous flower arrangements inspired by priceless paintings, sculptures and other works of art. For free. During the four-day festival, which starts tomorrow (Thursday, April 11), the museum will stay open until 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday. On Sunday, it will host a Family Day Event. Docent-led tours are available all four days.
Now in its 35th year, Art in Bloom is Mia’s most popular fundraiser. The proceeds will bring more than 81,000 kids to the museum and provide off-site arts education to nearly 93,000 students. So there are ticketed events. But first, the freebies.
On Thursday, “Flowers After Hours” from 5:30-9 p.m. WCCO’s Jason DeRusha will host a fashion show of floral couture. A cash bar will be available, and you can take a first look at the art-inspired floral works at their freshest. On Friday, “TGI Flowers” from 5:30-9 p.m. Socializing, floral displays, cash bar and pop-up performances by Minnesota Dance Collaborative. On Sunday, Family Day Event from 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Storytelling, crafts, and more.
The ticketed events are a (sold-out) lecture and floral master class with Liverpool native Joseph Massie, one of Europe’s top botanical artists; mixology workshops (cocktails with a floral twist); a fashion show and formal luncheon; and a make-and-take workshop on the Japanese planting style of kokedama.
Drive, bus, Lyft, walk, or ski to Art in Bloom. FMI including a calendar of docent-led tours.
Rock the Garden 2019 announced, on sale
The lineup was announced Tuesday morning on the Current, and one thing we noticed right away is this year’s Rock the Garden – set for Saturday, June 29 on the Walker’s lawn, with great views of the Sculpture Garden and the Minneapolis skyline – will include a lot of women. Two of the eight groups are led by women, and three more feature women in the band.
Indie rock quintet The National will be here, and Australian indie rocker Courtney Barnett, and L.A. punk band X (which formed, in 1977, and the lead singer is still Exene Cervenka), Heart Bones (Har Mar Superstar’s new duo with Sabrina Ellis), Minneapolis indie rockers Bad Bad Hats, hometown hip-hop artist deM atlaS, Nashville-based Delta Blues artist Adia Victoria and New Zealand’s guitar-pop group The Beths.
[image_credit]Courtesy of Rock the Garden[/image_credit][image_caption]Australian indie rocker Courtney Barnett is scheduled to perform at Rock the Garden 2019.[/image_caption]
St. Olaf may have a Munch
A painting given in 1999 to St. Olaf College may be an original work by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch of “The Scream” fame, St. Olaf announced Tuesday.
An unfinished portrait of violinist Eva Mudocci, “Eva” hung in the dining room of the college president’s house. In 2017, Munch biographer Rima Shore contacted the college and asked for access to the painting and corresponding files. Provenance was uncovered – Shore’s international research revealed correspondence and auction records that corroborate the existence of an unfinished painting – and experts from the Scientific Analysis of Fine Arts (SAFA) stepped in. They collected tiny samples from the portrait, studied the colors, conducted a molecular analysis and compared the samples to other known Munch paintings and actual tubes of paint from the artist’s studio. SAFA concluded that all of the pigments used in “Eva” are era-appropriate and similar to other pigments used in other known works by Munch.
But there’s still another step before authentication can be established: more research in coordination with the Munch Museum in Oslo.
Anyway, it’s exciting. Will the painting return to the dining room? Will it hang in the college’s Flaten Art Museum? Will it visit Mia? That would be nice. Maybe it could come to the Cargill gallery, the small one off the lobby that hosted the Vermeer.
The picks
Tonight (Wednesday, April 10) at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival: “Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin.” A loving and illuminating biography of the great fantasy/science fiction writer and creator of Earthsea. Director Arwen Curry combines narrative, interviews, and animation to explore Le Guin’s life, work, and expansive imagination. Interviews with authors including Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon and Neil Gaiman hint at her profound influence. 9:45 p.m. Also Friday at 4:30 p.m. and Saturday at 2:30 p.m. FMI including trailer, times and tickets ($15/11/8).
[image_caption]Director Arwen Curry combines narrative, interviews, and animation to explore the author’s life, work, and expansive imagination in “Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin.”[/image_caption]
Friday at the O’Shaughnessy: Ragamala Dance Company and Brooklyn Rider: A Shared Evening. The Bharatanatyam dance ensemble and the string quartet won’t perform together. But they know and respect each other, and they feel they are similar in aesthetic mission, so they’re doing a split-bill evening. Ragamala’s co-artistic director Aparna Ramaswamy explained, “We both use family as an incubator to absorb and re-create our artistic lineage” and “we both believe our respective mediums are not museum pieces.” We recently saw another split-bill evening, BRKFST Dance Company and Kaleena Miller Dance at the Cowles, and it worked brilliantly. 7:30 p.m. FMI and tickets (adult $34; other pricing available).
Saturday: Record Store Day. Looking at the list of indie record stores taking part in this year’s Record Store Day, we see several that have hung on for decades, through vinyl and 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs and back to vinyl again, through Napster and torrents and what’s been called the collapse of the music industry in the first decade of the 2000s, to the consolidation and homogenization of radio and the rise of streaming. And, for Electric Fetus, the 35W construction. Talk about resilience. Raise a tonearm or your vintage Walkman to the Fetus, Know Name, Down in the Valley, Homestead Pickin’ Parlor, Hymies, Roadrunner and Cheapo as you shop for your chosen RSD exclusive releases. Maybe you’ll come home with the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s “The Spiritual” from 1974. Or Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks – Original New York Test Pressing.” Or Aretha Franklin’s “The Atlantic Singles 1967.” Or (wow!) “John Cage Meets Sun Ra” on 7″ vinyl and DVD. Not all stores will carry all releases, but you already know that. FMI.
Saturday at Orchestra Hall: Minnesota Orchestra: “Inside the Classics: Amy Beach – American Pioneer.” Sarah Hicks conducts and violist Sam Bergman hosts a program about the first American woman to compose a symphony. The first half will explore the life, technique and legacy of Beach (1867-1944), with excerpts performed by the orchestra. The second half will be Beach’s complete “Gaelic Symphony,” which the orchestra last performed in 1917. On Tuesday, Bergman tweeted, in part: “If you’re someone who, like me, thinks orchestras need to be doing more concerts that get away from the same fifteen dead white male composers, this is the kind of show we NEED you to buy tickets for.” He’s right, you know. 8 p.m. FMI and tickets ($20-50).
