Transplanted American decorative arts - New England decorative art objects owned by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and art collectors in Minnesota - Current and Coming

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 1997 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

Because America has always been a society on the move it is not surprising that so many examples of decorative arts created in New England have found a permanent home in Minneapolis, Minnesota. An exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts entitled Inherited and Collected: The Arts of New England in Minnesota presents a wide variety of objects owned by the museum and on loan from private collectors and public institutions. The exhibition comprises some 150 objects and is on view through January 25, 1998.

The museum was established in 1915 by a group of local collectors, a great many of whom bad their ancestral roots in the East, particularly in New England. The interest in that region was amplified by the founding director, Joseph Breck, who came to Minneapolis from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. From the outset the museum decided to install its holdings in period-room settings, then the most popular way to display decorative arts in museums. Breck's successor, Russell Plimpton, also from the Metropolitan Museum, endorsed this concept. He arrived at the museum in 1921 and set about acquiring the first American period room - a parlor from the William Russell House in Providence, Rhode Island, dating to the early 1770s. The establishment in 1922 of the Friends of the Institute, whose principal goal was to support acquisitions, marked the first period of major accessions of New England furniture for the museum.

A second period room, from a farmhouse in North Branford, Connecticut, found a ready patron in Mrs. Charles C. Bovey, who furnished it in memory of her mother, Mrs. Martin B. Koon. A 1771 parlor and dining room from the Colonel John Smart house in Charleston, South Carolina, the gift of James Ford Bell and Louise H. Bell in memory of his parents, James S. and Sallie M. Bell, stimulated the acquisition of high-style furniture from the coastal cabinetmaking centers of Boston, Newport, New York, and Philadelphia. Mr. Bell also had a keen interest in eighteenth-century American silver, and from the 1920s until his death in 1961 he donated a number of important examples. The last New England period room came into being through the generosity of Mrs. Warren C. MacFarlane and Mr. and Mrs. Wayne H. MacFarlane in 1968. The hand-painted Chinese export wallpaper became the setting for the collection of Federal furniture.

Other pieces in the collection have been donated by individuals who brought their heirlooms with them when they moved from the East to Minneapolis. In many cases these pieces have descended in the families of their original owners and thus have established provenances.

The exhibition, which was organized by Christopher Monkhouse and Catherine L. Futter, gives the public an understanding of the ways in which objects enter a museum collection and the importance of local patronage in building a museum's holdings. It will also provide the visitor with the chance to see some objects taken out of their permanent places in the period rooms, where they are more difficult to see close at hand.

There is no catalogue of the exhibition.