The art of ‘Place-Keepers’: How Latina cultural workers are preserving community space ‘with or without funding’

Despite Minnesota’s reputation as a national leader in arts funding, state support flows overwhelmingly to white artists and institutions, leaving out many Black, Indigenous and Latino artists.

In a newly released book, University of Minnesota assistant professor of Chicano and Latino studies Jessica Lopez Lyman focuses on something else for which the state has a national reputation — the snow that buries streets, trees and rooftops — as a metaphor for how state cultural investment minimizes the artistic contributions of communities of color.

“The way that Minnesota is positioned within the nation is really like the whiteout effect,” Lopez Lyman said.

While Minnesota artists also receive support from private and philanthropic foundations, the state’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, created through the 2008 Legacy Amendment, distributes nearly $9 million annually. Yet Minnesotans of color, who make up a quarter of the state’s population, receive just 7.1% of the fund’s awards, with Latino artists receiving 2.16% and Native artists 2.66%, Lopez Lyman said.

Lopez Lyman’s book, “Place-Keepers: Latina/x Art, Performance, and Organizing in the Twin Cities,” traces how Minnesota has historically been framed in the country. In 1973, Time magazine highlighted former Gov. Wendell Anderson with the headline “The Good Life in Minnesota.” The cover shows Anderson holding a freshly caught northern pike, a white man seated behind him in a fishing boat and a sunlit lake framed by pine trees — an image of Midwestern purity and prosperity that left communities of color out of the picture.

“We have to remember that during this period, there was no social media. Time was one of the main publications,” Lopez Lyman said.

Inside the same issue, an article titled “Minnesota: A State That Works” noted, “Blacks rioted in Minneapolis in 1966 and 1967, but with only 1% of the state’s population, they have not yet forced Minnesotans into any serious racial confrontation. Or at least, not an apocalyptic confrontation.”

“This ‘good life,’ idyllic place, has been so detrimental for folks of color,” she added. “What I want to focus on in the book is, how are people creating life despite all that?”

Long before Lopez Lyman became an author or professor, she was performing spoken word as a 17-year-old at open mics. She appeared at some of Minneapolis’ most formative cultural spaces: the Quest Club, formerly Glam Slam, the nightclub Prince opened in the early 1990s; Intermedia Arts, a platform for marginalized creatives; Cafe SouthSide, a queer community hub; Blue Nile, an Ethiopian restaurant on Franklin Avenue; and the University of Minnesota’s Appleby Hall.

Most of these spaces no longer exist. Cafe SouthSide, driven out by rising rent and a landlord who didn’t renew its lease, reflects the “economic strain to maintain an art-centered place in a neoliberal, gentrifying city,” Lopez Lyman writes in “Place-Keepers.”

She was born and raised in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood, with her ties to a broader Latino community forming in pieces — through Christmas trips to the West Side for tamales and summers spent with her mother’s family in California. She later earned her Ph.D. in Chicana and Chicano studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

“When I moved back, I was seeing all the ways that gentrification closed spaces that I loved,” Lopez Lyman said. “Seeing how drastically the neighborhoods, both in St. Paul and Minneapolis, changed while I was gone, really broke my heart.”

“Place keeping means that we work very intentionally to maintain our home — our physical home, but also our sense of home,” Lopez Lyman said.

Shaped by interviews dating back to 2013, “Place-Keepers” traces the intertwined art and activism of Latina and Latinx cultural workers across the region. Among them are Festival de las Calaveras founder Deborah Ramos, Puerto Rican singer-songwriter and state Rep. Maria Isa, Afro-Caribbean artist Lady Midnight, Puerto Rican muralist Olivia Levins Holden, Salvadoran poet and playwright Lorena Duarte, and Serpentina Arts founder Maria Cristina Tavera.

Tavera said she feels a deep connection to her Mexican roots through her mother’s family, and she uses her art to nurture that bond. “I have this nostalgia and yearning to be with them. Living so far away from them, I really wanted to make sure that my kids actually understood the culture,” Tavera said.

Lopez Lyman’s book launch was celebrated at El Colegio High School on Dec. 12.

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