Minnesota Marine Art Museum — Attraction in Winona

It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. 'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

Why did I stopp'st thou? I stopp'st thou to tell you about The Minnesota Marine Art Museum of Winona.

I do it as an old man did it for me, compelled, tugging at the sleeve of your coat, with a wild look in my eye as of one cursed or blessed by some riveting vision or come back from the terrible face of truth. For years this old man would come to the library I work at, and, as if under suchlike compulsion, he would ask me if I had been yet to The Minnesota Marine Art Museum.

"No." I would sadly say over the years. Over and over. And every time I did so his heart would seem to break before my eyes. He got older and older. So did I. And he never stopped asking.

Then one summer my wife and I decided to go to The Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona.

We'd heard good things about it.

I for one had heard good things about it 271 times over the course of a decade.

Oh they were all of them true! Every last good thing!

I knew that one of the two existing versions of Washington Crossing the Delaware was there, and it is a striking painting indeed, full of clarity and moment and little historical details and inaccuracies. I knew they had a Van Gogh. I knew about the Picasso and the Monets. And they were all pretty great. But I knew about them almost as curiosities, like, how could this wee, insignificant museum in the middle of nowhere hold paintings by significant historical artists?

I was looking at it all wrong.

This would be a museum well worth visiting in any city in the world: Paris, Tokyo, Rome, New York. In a lovely, well-spaced building, echoing elements of rehabbed warehouse, northeastern seaside building of a couple hundred years ago, and an odd, subtle dash of prairie architecture, situated gracefully on the banks of the Mississippi, this museum's one rule is that the paintings and art relate to, feature, and are inspired by water. If you think about it this probably still includes a good third of all paintings from art history. So it's just about the right sort of restriction, giving focus and a connecting thread through everything without making one miss out on too many hot paintings. Does the Mona Lisa have water for instance? Yep. Starry Night? It might. I think so, but I can't tell for sure about those smeary blue lines in the foreground of the town. Birth of Venus? Yes, totally. Dali's Persistance of Memory? That's the sea behind all those melting clocks! Girl with a Pearl Earring? No, sorry, no water there even if you could, theoretically stretch the pearl to being a object of the Sea, but you get my point.

In fact, to truly impress you I will take a page from The Minnesota Marine Art Museum itself. I will restrict myself to the sea, telling you about artists in the museum whose last names begin with"C".

The best Courbet I have ever seen in my life, Source of the Lison, is a naturalistic picture of the mouth of a cave without horizon or sky. Cezanne, who sometimes feels too detached and cerebral for me, has a gorgeous riverside painting that is pure impressionist delight. Mary Cassatt's picture of a girl reading (with a sliver of river out the window in the background) was a beautiful character study I only noticed in retrospect out of my wife's accolades. Corot's landscape was a work of strangely dappled magic, dotted about with leaves, texture and definition as if they were light itself. And then also in the realm of sheer, painterly wizardry was Constable's dark, oil smeared creek hollow scene, somehow a quiet wonder among vast dozens of all the other superb, watery landscapes. And finally we get the gloriously romantic and heart-stoppingly colorful Chagall, a dream of love that comes with a fish and flowers.

And so I was converted. I too became a Mariner of the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, compelled to wander the world telling everyone I meet, wild-eyed, that you must see it. You must.

It's a terrible curse, but it...

Today was the first time ever that our 9-yr old and 6-yr old granddaughters visited an art museum. I anticipated spending at most one hour at the museum and prepared them for their first visit to understand what they would see and what behavior expectations were. Thanks to a little preparation and the Bingo Scavenger Hunt the museum has ready in 3 different difficulty levels, my girls had an incredibly successful and rewarding visit they will not soon forget! We came ready with sketch pads and a pencil to draw a favorite piece of art. The museum offered a pencil bag with a full colored pencil set, a variety of pencils in different hardnesses for shading, and a pencil sharpener for their use! My granddaughters were quite excited and enthralled by the Bingo activity, and the other few activities set up for children, such as the table with the paper shredder, the art table to take a photo of their artwork and display it in a virtual quilt projected on the wall, and learning how to be an "artivist". Furthermore, they sat on the ground to sketch a photo and a painting, and learned what Impressionism is as well as the immense talent the makers of these pieces of art have. The girls and I have painted together oh so many times and started to understand the magnitude of skill of these artists. I cannot thank the museum staff enough for truly understanding how to help children interact with art! This was a gift that continued to give: Once at home, they grabbed their colored pencils and finished their sketches, took photos of them, shared them with their friends, and proudly showed them to their parents. The older granddaughter told her mother how much she LOVED the art museum and she'd like to go to more art museums. I wanted to cry when I heard this!! They are planning their next visit to a nearby art museum they have never made the time to see. I plan on the many art museums in the Twin Cities in the next year. Thank you for having had such a positive influence on...

I have visited this museum every year for the past nine years, save 2020. When I entered I met two young ladies representing the museum to whom I expressed my happiness about being back at the MMAM for my annual trip. I left, disappointed and disillusioned, 45 minutes later from a place where I normally spend 2-3 hours. It has now become a leftist political soap box masquerading as an art museum. The book in their Gift Shop with the most volumes is “The 1619 Project.” As I wandered the galleries I learned about highly relevant artistic topics such as “Gender and Landscape,” “Climate Change,” Global Warming,” colonization, etc. Ironically I had just come from The Winona Historical Society Museum two miles away which contained far less political commentary than this “art” museum. Almost all of the Hudson River Art for which the Museum gained much of its renown has been removed to be replaced by “modern art.”When I tried to explain to the same girls at the front desk my profound disappointment at the politicization of one of the finest small art museums in the Midwest, I was told repeatedly how “That is your take on it,” which is equivalent to telling someone who saw the President at the White House that that is merely his opinion. One of them proudly added that there was another version of “The 1619 Project”-for children! I observed, “So you are trying to indoctrinate them too?”

Whatever one’s political views, the art museum is not the appropriate venue in which to express them. When the museum is so abused, it ceases to be an art museum and becomes just another talk show for political rants. I teash Modern US and Military History at a prominent university and I am deeply troubled by what I saw at this museum. So now we have one more formerly great cultural institution transformed into a mockery by its obsession with politics....