Megan Emery, Courtney Murray, Luke Boehnke, Mary LaGarde, and Megan Randall
Abstract
Founded in 1975, the Minneapolis American Indian Center is one of the oldest urban American Indian community centers in the country, providing educational and social services for a large and tribally diverse Native American community in the metropolitan area. As the building was being constructed, artist George Morrison (Grand Portage Ojibwe) was commissioned to design a mural for the south side of the building: the monumental artwork has remained an integral part of the Minneapolis American Indian Center façade for nearly 50 years. Primarily composed of over 800 Western Red Cedar boards of various lengths, the boards are assembled to create a repeating chevron and morning star motif. Never officially given a title, Morrison once suggested calling the mural “Turning the Feather Around: A Mural for the Indian”.
In fall 2022, the Center began a major renovation to upgrade and expand the facility, which reopened to the public in May 2024. As part of the expansion, Midwest Art Conservation Center (MACC) was contracted to remove, conserve, and reinstall the mural in a new location on the renovated building façade, a location that was both more visible to the community and more exposed to weathering and wet/dry cycling. This was not a project MACC would (or should) take on alone. Collaboration was essential to make the project successful.
MACC partnered with Wolf Magritte, a design, fabrication and installation firm for complex works of art, to carry out the project. Project technicians were hired from the local community of Native artists to work alongside MACC and Wolf Magritte. The technicians were a great asset to the team, as they shared stories and history of the local Native community and acted as ambassadors of the project within the neighborhood. Most importantly however, was the collaboration and communication between the Executive Director of the Center, Mary LaGarde (White Earth Nation), architectural design teams, led by Sam Olbekson (White Earth Nation), Loeffler Construction, and other stakeholders that was crucial to inform complex decisions about the mural’s new location and proposed preservation methods. This paper will provide an overview of the Mural’s conservation, with an emphasis on creative design solutions for reinstallation and treatment decisions based on sustainable long-term care.