Art: Will state artists be MIA at the MIA?

Phones jangled anxiously, artists grumbled and rumbled, and museum staff members reacted with shock and tears this week when news broke that Stewart Turnquist, a popular Minneapolis Institute of Arts staffer, had resigned abruptly after 31 years on the job.

It wasn't just that Turnquist, 66, is the "soul" of the museum, as one fan called him, but that the future of his department seemed very much in jeopardy, too. Museum officials insist that his program will continue under different leadership, but critics fear that it will die without Turnquist's deft scrutiny and selfless commitment to artistic independence.

"People are angry," said painter Doug Padilla. "Stewart is really, really loved, and all the artists say this is the best experience they've ever had in a museum."

Since 1977, Turnquist has been coordinator of the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP), an artist-run department within the institute and the only program of its kind in the nation. Other museums have artists on staff, of course, but nowhere else does a committee of artists -- elected annually by their peers -- get to choose what exhibitions will be shown based on proposals from artists themselves.

The MAEP gets about 100 proposals each year and stages five shows, all featuring work by Minnesota artists. No other Twin Cities art museum gives so much high-profile attention and space to state artists, or treats them with such respect, a fact that has earned the institute national attention and kudos from the community.

"That department has been profoundly important to the museum and is one of the things that makes the Art Institute so different from other institutions," said Harriet Bart, a sculptor who had three MAEP shows in the 1970s and '80s and later served on the artist-selection panel.

"It's not only important for artists to have a venue to show in, but it's important for the community to have a place that reflects the creative activity that comes from here," said filmmaker Tom DeBiaso, a Minneapolis College of Art and Design professor and member of the MAEP artist committee this year.

Minnesota's artists have organized more than 200 shows since the program began in 1975, ranging from traditional classical-realist painting and sculpture installations to recycled paper products, a talking dolphin and a computer-controlled, virtual-reality grotto. Various MAEP shows have featured full-scale photos of Italian olive trees, Latino-style wrestling posters, live chickens and ants, and a simulated motorcycle race track.

One hallmark of the program is that the exhibits are free of the economic pressures that commercial galleries experience and outside the purview of the museum's art historians and curators whose priorities sometimes differ from those of artists.

"There is nowhere else in the community that allows artists to display art that isn't necessarily commercial," said Bart. "They do installations that are beautifully designed and professionally executed, produce well-written brochures and give Minnesota artists an imprimatur that they're valued. That is significant."

So why would Turnquist's departure threaten paradise?

For all its success, the MAEP has not always been popular with museum trustees and senior management, some of whom have been uncomfortable with the iconoclastic nature of certain shows or simply object to the untraditional nature of its operation. Over the years, Turnquist quietly defended the MAEP against its critics.

After a pilot program proved successful, the MAEP was incorporated as a full-fledged curatorial department. Turnquist was hired in 1977 as liaison to the artist panel, but with no say in what the shows might contain. Throughout his 31-year tenure -- under five directors and several acting directors -- he maintained a zealous respect for artists and their interests, insisting that the program remain independent of the museum's other curatorial departments.

Last year, however, then-director William Griswold drafted a reorganization plan that made the MAEP a subdivision of a new contemporary-art department whose curator was yet to be hired. His successor, Kaywin Feldman, who arrived in January, completed the reorganization and hired Liz Armstrong, a California museum executive and former Walker Art Center curator, to run the new department starting in August.

That decision appears to have been the final blow to Turnquist, who resigned this month with just two weeks' notice. He declined to comment this week, citing museum policy and legal issues. Earlier, however, he said that he admires and respects Armstrong, who is widely popular among artists. Nevertheless, he feared that the artists' control of the MAEP program would be fatally compromised under the new system.

What happens now depends on what the artists' committee does when it meets Tuesday, and how the museum responds.

"Maybe the existing artist panel will say it can work with the new guidelines, but in my opinion, if the museum can't give the artists voice in the museum, then there is no more MAEP," said Randall.