Star Tribune
Duluth Art Institute, pushed out of the historic Depot, finds a new home
DULUTH — The Duluth Art Institute, which spent months in a back-and-forth with its former landlords at the St. Louis County Depot, is moving its gallery to a former Social Security office in a former bank building — less than a half-mile from where it spent decades.
The 3,100-square foot space on the fourth floor of the high-rise office building has two walls of windows overlooking the city’s Central Hillside neighborhood. The vibe is corporate, for now, but executive director Christina Woods had tile samples on hand, plans to paint, and was visualizing the movable gallery walls that will soon be installed.
Classes and studios will remain at the old Carnegie Library the Art Institute owns in Lincoln Park.
After a hunt for a new gallery and the setbacks of COVID-19 — the staff is still playing catch-up with exhibitions that were scheduled but not held — Woods is ready to settle into a period with fewer pivots.
“I’m looking forward to some quiet time to get stuff in place,” she said earlier this week, while showing off the new space.
The Art Institute’s lease at the St. Louis County Depot ends May 1. It plans to open the new gallery by mid-summer — in time for its popular showcase of members’ art. In the meantime, its keepers have plans to expand and renovate the building in Lincoln Park, or potentially acquire another property that could serve as its permanent home. It’s pursuing a bonding request for $5 million from the Legislature.
The new gallery is in the heart of the downtown. Though it’s referred to as the U.S. Bank building, the office building was sold by the bank to 130 West Superior Street LLC in 2021. Its new owners had hoped to deviate from traditional tenants.
“My business partner Chris Priley and I always knew the building’s potential included more than just providing office space,” Tom Stender said in a news release. “We’re honored to partner with such an impactful public institution.”
Robin Washington, president of the Art Institute’s board of directors, said he has liked the positivity he has been getting from the new landlords. When he suggested that an art installation be placed on one of the building’s second-floor rooftops, visible from the gallery window that sits two floors higher, it wasn’t nixed.
The Art Institute has been on the hunt for a new space for more than a year.
The St. Louis County Depot opened as a rail station in 1892 and ended passenger service in 1969. It was spared demolition and instead was named a National Historic Site. It reopened in 1973 as the home of several arts and heritage organizations.
In 2022, the St. Louis County Attorney’s Office doubled back to a long-ignored Minnesota statute requiring a competitive bidding process on government properties. It asked tenants at the historic building, including the Duluth Art Institute, to submit proposals — and it opened the bidding to outsider nonprofit and for-profit companies who might be able to use the on-site stages or a loading dock.
The county was offering just one-year leases, a truncated time period because of capital improvement plans that would require room for workers and vacated work spaces, and the shuffling of tenants.
The initial request for proposals made some tenants, including the Art Institute, nervous. In the end, they were the only organization that had its proposal denied. Another longtime tenant, the Duluth Playhouse, had moved out months earlier.
Mary Tennis, executive director of the St. Louis County Depot, said Wednesday that no one is yet marked to move into the former Art Institute space. They are keeping it open to allow for flexibility as the building goes through its upgrades — which still need funding, but could start as soon as late winter 2025.
“We’ve never once invoked that,” Lingo said. “There have been conversations [about] in order to compel ID you need to have identification, or you could be arrested for that, or if you’re not behaving, or you need to be trespassed. But that’s a different conversation than immigration, and deportation has never been brought to the conversation.”
Hundreds of U.S. cities, including Minneapolis, have declared themselves sanctuary cities, where police are discouraged from reporting people’s immigration status unless they are investigating a serious crime.
Marta has sold empanadas and Ecuadorian desserts on Lake Street, usually making $60 to $70 a day to pay her rent and support her children. The 38-year-old woman also sold food on the streets of Ecuador, where migrants have come in record numbers to Minnesota, fleeing poverty and violence. The Fort Snelling immigration court has a backlog of over 13,341 Ecuadorian cases pending, a huge increase since 2018, when there were 344 cases.
Cindy Weckwerth, environmental health director for the Minneapolis Health Department, said in recent months, the city has seen an increase in unlicensed vendors and complaints about them.
Lingo said so far this year, there have been 38 violations and citations for operating a sidewalk food cart without a license; repeat offenders can get cited, which brings a $200 fine.
Inspectors are sometimes accompanied by police officers, Lingo said, because often vendors resist giving their identity and sometimes are uncooperative or are amid a large group.
Star Tribune
Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is slowly opening up about her childhood past amid domestic violence
She realized that violence in the home wasn’t normal when she finally left for college and sensed that other kids didn’t grow up that way. “Most people don’t call home to see if I should come home after school, or if I should go to my best friend Lauren’s house,” she said.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan observed artwork hanging at Cornerstone, an advocacy center for victims of domestic violence, human trafficking and sexual violence. The tour of the Minneapolis facility was led by Colleen Schmitt, director of emergency services. (Renée Jones Schneider)
Flanagan has often connected with Minnesotans by sharing tales about her personal life, such as when she recounts what it was like to grow up with a single mom in St. Louis Park who relied on public assistance. And yet for many years, she said, she didn’t feel comfortable talking openly about her family’s history with domestic abuse.
That changed when she got a nudge from an unlikely source. Flanagan, as she tells it, was in Washington, D.C., in 2009 as part of her work with the progressive training group Wellstone Action. Then-Vice President Joe Biden was receiving an award from the Sheila Wellstone Institute for his advocacy of domestic violence victims. Before the official ceremony, Flanagan felt compelled to share with Biden about the abuse she observed as a child.
“I just start weeping, and the vice president stood up and gave me a hug. I literally cried into his chest,” she recalled. “And he said, ‘If you can tell the vice president that story, I bet you can tell other people that story.’ ”
And so she has, gradually.
The advocates at Cornerstone, including executive director Artika Roller, who has spent more than two decades helping abuse victims, heard Flanagan speak about it at a rally for action among advocates and survivors.
Another closure of I-494 in the south metro will put thousands of motorists on detour this weekend.
The eastbound lanes of the freeway will be shut down between Hwy. 100 and Cedar Avenue/Hwy. 77 and westbound lanes between Cedar Avenue/Hwy. 77 and Interstate 35W from 10 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday, the Minnesota Department of Transportation said.
Some ramps leading to I-494 will start closing at 8 p.m. Friday. Motorists will be directed to use Crosstown Hwy. 62 to get around the closure, the agency said.
American Boulevard, which runs parallel to I-494, will be closed starting Monday through Nov. 11 between Hwy. 100 and France Avenue in Bloomington.
American Blvd. is closed to through traffic in both directions between Hwy 100 and France Ave
The closures are related to construction in which MnDOT is adding an EZ Pass lane on I-494 between I-35W and Hwy. 100, rebuilding the I-35W/I-494 interchange and replacing bridges over I-494 at Portland, Nicollet and 12th avenues.
In the west metro, westbound Hwy. 55 remains closed through Nov. 1 between Hwy. 169 and Interstate 494. Motorists can use I-394 as a detour MnDOT said.
