![Alison Hiltner left and Carolyn Payne carried a painting by Samual Weinberg Thursday at the Soo Visual Arts Center April 2, 2015 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. ] Jerry Holt/ Jerry.Holt@Startribune.com](https://arc.stimg.co/startribunemedia/VC72EPOW26GLH56BIOXZNKB7UY.jpg?&w=1080)
A tour of the new Soo Visual Arts Center begins at the front desk. It is, in essence, a cardboard box. Actually, it's a "corrugated plastic" box, according to executive director Carolyn Payne, who's padding around her new workspace in metallic high-tops.
The desk looks like an avant shipping package gone modular. FedEx meets Ikea. "I'm a little concerned about what to do with my coffee while I'm sitting here," she deadpans.
It's hard not to see the desk as a symbol of the gallery. What would a move — or a brief stint of homelessness — be without a cardboard box?
After 13 years on Lyndale Avenue in Uptown, 2.5 years after the death of its founder Suzy Greenberg, and amid one of the most impressive upswings in art-scene memory, the hothouse gallery is uprooting. This Saturday, it opens three exhibitions at its new space in on Bryant Avenue, just off the Midtown Greenway.
Still, Soo VAC remains Soo VAC. Almost the entire interior of the new space — including the tile-mosaic pastiches of Magritte and Da Vinci in the bathrooms — was designed by artists. Opposite the cardboard desk will hang a splashy/exotic, oversized watercolor by Lindsay Smith. And the desk itself? That's Will Natzel. In 2013, the Owatonna, Minn., artist filled the gallery's front room with an oppressive maze of giant cardboard tubes. People either loved it or hated it. But it was sculpture with a capital S: invasive, butting in, forcing audience engagement via ducking and high-stepping.
This is what Soo VAC does: It lets people — often unknowns — install giant cardboard worms. Or, as Rollin Marquette did in 2014, a massive curtain made with ersatz human flesh. Or, as Jaime Carrera did for Easter 2013, a Cheetos/Jesus-themed performance called "Cheesus." Or they just let art vets like David Lefkowitz mount a knockout show.
"We're not big on résumés here," says Alison Hiltner, who runs the space alongside Payne.
Since Greenberg's passing — a change that would torpedo most nonprofits — Soo VAC has quietly become the best gallery in town. Shows involve names you don't recognize, and types of work you'd never imagine — and might actively hate. There's a sense of discovery and surprise, but without the dopey brashness of an "experimental space," or the false glamour of a hype scene.
