Us suburbanites are often shunned, mocked or just plain misunderstood by our big-city neighbors.
So when I learned that a few new museum exhibits were featuring the suburban experience, I was already expecting a kick in the cul de sac.
I have to travel to a Minneapolis/ St. Paul museum to learn about the burbs? I mean, come on!
But other than a few missteps, the exhibits offered a fair amount of insight into how, and where, millions of Americans have decided to put down roots.
And hopefully they’ll also clear up a few misperceptions our Minneapolis-St. Paul neighbors have of the suburbs that surround them.
The three shows emphasize design, history and power.
I’ll start with the most obvious.
Laura E. Migliorino, Chicago Avenue, 2007. Courtesy of the artist. (Photo courtesy of the Walker Art Center)
Suburban evolution
The Walker Art Center’s “Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes,” is a must-see for any suburban city planner. Its emphasis is on design, including a number of ideas, some far-fetched, about how to improve the suburb.
Many people think of the suburb of a “forever shiny” type of place. However, this exhibit recognizes the suburb as an evolving, aging place.
For example, there’s a photo display detailing how Circle-Ks and big box retail buildings were re-used after going belly-up. It brings to mind the short-lived Big K in Shakopee, which closed, became a Rainbow grocery, and then closed again, all in the course of about two years.
The exhibit also casts a critical eye on the suburbs. Mowing the lawn? Check. Destroying farm fields for developments? Check. Paving everything with asphalt? Check.
A couple commentaries stand out. There’s the clever and disturbing Lee Stoetzel photo of a “McMansion” made out actual McDonald’s food. And then there is the Matthew More aerial photo of a floor plan outline mowed into a barley field. (Get it? The fields are being plowed over for homes.)
The exhibit also includes six panoramic photographs from St. Paul photographer Chris Faust’s excellent “Suburban Documentation Project,” with photos from Eden Prairie, Prior Lake, Chaska and other growing locales.
Where the exhibit falls short is its treatment of the people who actually inhabit the suburbs.
Laura Migliorino’s photos go a long way to showing that, yes, immigrants live in the burbs. Hopefully this destroys the big-city misconception that suburbs are all-white enclaves. Migliorino’s are also the only portraits in the show that illustrate the humanity of the suburbs.
Angela Strassheim’s photos are hauntingly beautiful, but give the feeling that suburbanites are distant or broken inside. Then there are the photos by Larry Sultan regarding the adult entertainment industry in southern California. What does that have to do with the suburbs?
If you don’t like what you see, you can submit a video of your own suburb to the Walker’s YouTube site, and then view it at the exhibit – one of the show’s best concepts.
Museum: Walker Art Center
Exhibit: Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes
Description: “Examines the art and architecture of the contemporary American suburb.”
Runs through: Aug. 17
Tickets: $10 adults; $8 seniors (65+); $6 student/teen (with ID)
Location: 1750 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis
Info: www.walkerart.org [1]; (612) 375-7600
Rodeo queen contestants and kids, 1956, from the Irwin Norling archives. (Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society)
Suburban Noir
For the southwest suburbs, “Suburban World: The Norling Photos,” is like a tag board full of photos on display at your older brother’s graduation party.
The Minnesota Historical Society’s exhibit features photos by Irwin Norling and his family, who documented life in Bloomington in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.
Bloomington pretty much set the template for growing suburbs in the Twin Cities. As a freelance photographer for the Bloomington Sun and the Bloomington Police Department, Norling and his family took over 10,000 images of the town as its population exploded from 9,902 in 1950 to 82,000 in 1970.
A few years ago, journalist Brad Zellar plucked the photos from the obscurity of the Bloomington Historical Society’s basement.
The exhibit corresponds with a book by Zellar, who reports in the preface that Norling had no pretences about his “aesthetic.”
And the photos aren’t going to win any composition awards. However, as renowned photographer (and boyhood Chanhassen resident) Alec Soth states in the introduction to the book, “The genius is not in the technique; it is in being present.”
As Bloomington became a true suburb, Norling dutifully documented its life – the social clubs, the businesses, the crimes.
While the book takes more of a scattershot approach to Norling’s work, the exhibit places the photographs in categories. The exhibit’s presentation works best.
The book juxtaposes images such as a photo of an accidental electrocution next to one of a housewife pouring tea. While the presentation may represent Norling’s scattershot assignments, it strives to create a “suburbia’s dark underbelly,” feel that doesn’t necessarily work (described by Zellar as the "yin-yang nature of his archive”).
The photographs, by themselves, do a great job of illustrating this dichotomy of an optimistic era clashing with reality. In one, a billboard states, “Welcome to Bloomington: Future home of Major League Baseball.” In the foreground are two men who appear to be reconstructing a traffic accident scene.
Then there is the car with huge tailfins crushed under a sod truck, perhaps bringing grass to a new Bloomington development. In the background is a sign advertising a hotel with a TV in every room. The photo perfectly encapsulates the time.
The crime scene photos are only a portion of Norling’s work. His portraits of Bloomington residents really bring the exhibit to life.
There are a number of comical photos (the “Willy Water” mascot appears to be ogling Miss Bloomington in one classic photograph).
And there are photos that strike close to home. The opening of the I-35 interstate reminded me of Highway 212’s recent ribbon cutting. Appropriate, considering that in many ways, these 50-year-old photographs are showing us where we’re headed as growing suburbs (sans tailfins).
Irwin Norling, circa 1959. Norling documented life in Bloomington from the 1950s through the 1970s. (Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society)
Museum: Minnesota Historical Society
Exhibit: Suburban World: The Norling Photos
Description: “Through more than 10,000 images, Irwin Denison Norling captured the strange juxtapositions, incongruities, and dark corners of suburban America in the 1950s and ’60s.”
Runs through: June 15
Tickets: $10 adults, $8 seniors and college students, and $5 children ages 6-17.
Location: 345 Kellogg Blvd W., St. Paul
Info: www.mnhs.org; (651) 259-3000
Suburban democracy
Minnesota photographer Paul Shambroom has made a career of picturing power – photographs of corporate board rooms, and missile silos and anti-terrorist training camps.
All of these photographs are on display in this show. However, the portion of the exhibit that makes it for me, are nine photographs from Shambroom’s “Meetings” series.
This work features councilors across the United States conferring during meetings. And it has to be one of the best photo projects ever undertaken representing democracy in action.
Am I biased? Probably. As a community journalist, I’ve spent a large portion of my life covering meetings: school board meetings, city council meetings, homeowner association meetings, county board meetings, and on and on.
In the preface to his book “Meetings,” he notes that he photographed 150 meetings across the United States between 1999 and 2003. “My goal in all cases was to find the body that represented the smallest increment of local government,” Shambroom stated.
And, while this exhibit doesn’t have a strictly suburban bent, it seemed appropriate to include in this review. It supports the belief that “all politics is local.”
The representatives sit in rustic halls and wood-paneled chambers, wearing T-shirts or suits. Some look like businessmen, others like farmers, others like aging hippies.
And as our elected officials, they’re doing our work, at the most local level.
Their decisions will typically impact us more than our national representatives.
Shambroom’s giant photographs, and his saturated ink printing process, give the images a sort of painterly “monumental moment” or “Last Supper” feel.
The large format also lets us dwell on the details. For example, a photograph of a Board of Selectmen in Lee, N.H. includes computer-generated graphs taped on the wall at one end of the table. On the other end, sits a small oil lamp.
The times change, democracy rolls on.
Museum: Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum
Exhibit: Paul Shambroom: Picturing Power
Description: “His series-based color photographs reveal both local and global manifestations of power, depicting scenes in industrial, business, community, and military environments.”
Runs through: April 20
Tickets: Free
Location: 333 East River Road, Minneapolis
Info: www.weisman.umn.edu [2]; (612) 625-9494