Ellen Mueller is an artist, author, and Director of Programs at Arts Midwest in Minneapolis. A few weeks ago, she walked by the M, noticing the current window exhibition, Im/perfect Slumbers, as well as Jose Dominguez’s sunny skyway installation, It’s Okay to Laugh. While her experience at the M was similar to many passers-by, Ellen went on to publish a zine about it, jump starting a springtime resurgence of her experimental arts writing publication, Art Sprawl. The single-page zine (which you can download for free here) shows a walking route she took from Lowertown Underground Artists, past the M on 4th and Robert streets, ending at Night Club Gallery.
Ellen is a celebrator. Her enthusiasm for checking out what’s new in the local art world is obvious, especially when shows are accessible, walkable, and available to anyone. She says that “by putting art in these public facing windows, it invites a whole new audience.”
These past three years of exclusively public-facing exhibitions at the M have brought a completely fresh perspective to how artwork gets presented in exhibitions at museums. Ellen digs it. She says, “I love that it treats everybody as a potentially interested viewer.”
Ellen Mueller in front of Rachel Breen’s I Wish This Was a Nightmare
Ellen Mueller taking in Gwen Westerman’s A Place for Dreams
An exhibition in the M’s windows has an impact as a whole, taking over the full exterior corner of the Pioneer Endicott building, but also treats each window bay as its own isolated viewing portal. In both ways, it gives bikers, light rail riders, skyway walkers, delivery truck drivers, construction workers, commuters, lunch goers, and residents the opportunity to engage equally.
Ellen is well-versed in looking at art as an experience, and not necessarily always one that is sought out on purpose, or arrived at in a museum. The coincidence of her walk past Im/perfect Slumbers seems all too fitting, as her latest book, Walking as Artistic Practice, is due to be published in October of 2023. The book explores all the ways that walking, the activity that has taken many viewers past the M, and ultimately through all twelve window exhibitions since 2020, can be considered its own form of art.
Prioritizing passers-by, and providing as much information to viewers as would be available in a traditional exhibition inside the museum, is a big part of what makes the M’s window exhibitions unique and meaningful. In Ellen’s words, “I think in the arts, we talk a big game about inclusion and community and belonging and access and all of these things, and I love when I see concrete examples of that, and I feel like that’s what these window exhibitions—and the long-term commitment to these exhibitions—demonstrates to me. A true, active commitment to engaging with nontraditional art audiences.”
You can stay up-to-date on Ellen Mueller’s soon-to-be-published book online at ellenmueller.com. Follow along with Ellen for more zines at art-sprawl.com, or at @art.sprawl on Instagram.
Minnesota Museum of American Art
350 Robert Street North
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Located in the Historic Pioneer Endicott
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