Minnesotans celebrate George Morrison exhibition in New York

At sunset Tuesday in New York, Briand Morrison stood on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with four generations of his family. Their numbers ranged from his mother, the artist Hazel Bellevue, to his grandchildren, some of whom came from Sweden.

Behind them, a giant banner hung between the museum’s stone columns: “The Magic City: George Morrison’s New York,” printed over an image of a glowing abstract painting in red, caramel and teal.

Briand Morrison is the son of George Morrison, the famous Minnesota Ojibwe artist who died in 2000.

“I think he would be happy, very happy,” Morrison says. “I think he would have been really satisfied. He told me that his dream was to come to New York, because that’s where the art is.”

A few dozen of the artist’s friends, family and fans traveled from Minnesota. They were joined by collectors, donors and other arts figures from New York and beyond for a special reception on October 21 to celebrate George Morrison’s first solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art – the most visited museum in the United States and one of the world’s most important art institutions.

“It’s the first major exhibition to explore George Morrison’s early years in New York, and this formative time period in his output,” says Sevia Yount, who curates the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum. “It should be done by a major institution in New York. It’s very important and critical in many ways.”

From the shores of Lake Superior to the heart of modern art

Morrison, who was a member of the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, was born in 1919 in the city of Chippewa on the North Shore. He attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, which awarded him a transfer scholarship in 1943 to study at the Art Students League of New York.

Morrison would live and create art in New York intermittently over the following decades. 80 years after Morrison first walked the city streets carrying his sketchbooks, New York came together to celebrate him.

After the Metropolitan Museum closed to the public Monday night, the gathering moved from the steps to the American Pavilion, where a reception with live jazz (the artist’s favorite) filled the towering glass-roofed hall of the Charles Engelhardt Court, and guests were free to wander the nearby gallery housing the Morrison gallery.

Minnesota guests included Todd Buckley, of the Minneapolis Buckley Gallery, which represents the George Morrison estate; Howard Oransky, director of the Catherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota and co-curator of “Dreaming Our Future: Ojibwe and Uchithi Shakovic Artists and Knowledge Keepers,” the first exhibition of the George Morrison Center for Indigenous Arts; April McCormick, treasurer of the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa; And Kate Penn, director of the Minnesota Museum of American Art, which was the single The largest lender of gallery artwork.

“He inspires a lot of artists, whether you’re Anishinaabe or any other nationality, and he’s left an amazing mark on contemporary abstract art, and it also represents who he is as an Anishinabe person,” McCormick says.

Celebrating a legacy that has been overlooked for too long

Many at the celebration discussed how the exhibition is a long-overdue corrective to art history.

While Morrison is well-known in the worlds of Native and Minnesota art, and is collected in museums across the country, this exhibition places him in a broader context. It presents Morrison—along with friends and peers such as Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Louise Nevelson—as an artist who helped shape the Modernist and Abstract Expressionist movements when the art world shifted from Europe to New York during World War II.

Beliveau, Morrison’s lifelong friend and ex-wife (and professor emeritus at MCAD), lived with him in New York, where their son Briand was born.

She says the exhibition is important “because it is the truth. He was instrumental in the Abstract Expressionist movement and that should be acknowledged.”

Belliveau stands in the gallery and looks at “Whalesbone,” a 1948 painting constructed of simplified shapes in red, blue, yellow and white. “Aren’t these just beautiful, vibrant colors,” she says.

Beliveau describes Morrison as an honest artist.

“It wasn’t derivative of anyone,” Belliveau says. “An artist who produces honest work that doesn’t borrow it from someone else, doesn’t borrow it from somewhere else, (has) a history of his own.”

Several Authorized Coordinators Patricia Marroquín Norby & The first full-time associate curator of Native American art at the Met – To organize the exhibition. Norby, who earned her doctorate from the University of Minnesota and serves on the board of directors of the Minnesota Museum of American Art in St. Paul, helped assemble one of the largest collections of George Morrison’s work ever on display.

“I think when people think of the American Abstract Expressionist movement, they think of Jackson Pollock, they think of Franz Kline, they think of Willem de Kooning. These were contemporaries of George Morrison, and they looked up to George,” Norby says. “They had great respect for him and his influence on the movement.”

A curator’s view from afar

Marroquin Norby was unable to attend the reception but spoke to MPR News by phone from one of her homes in Wisconsin.

“What’s interesting to me is that a lot of people said, ‘Why haven’t I heard of this artist?’ “It’s kind of shocking, because I’m from the Midwest,” Marroquin Norby says.

“Morrison is very beloved by the Native American art communities, by his own Grand Portage community, by the Ojibwe community in general, and he’s very celebrated here in the Midwest. One of my goals as a curator coming from the Midwest to New York City was to really highlight the many great artists, Native American artists who come from Wisconsin, who come from Minnesotans, who are often overlooked in these larger places.”

It was crucial, Yount says, that Marroquín Norby led the effort to have Morrison’s first pieces at the Metropolitan Museum, which led to the exhibition being organized.

“This is probably the most important outcome of this project, because it’s a permanent addition, right? It’s a very important moment for us,” Yount says.

Back at Charles Engelhardt’s court, Briand Morrison spoke to a crowd of people wearing ribbon skirts and suits surrounded by marble and bronze sculptures. He shared how he grew up with these paintings—some of which even hung above his bed as a child—and that he is very proud that they now hang in the Metropolitan Museum to share with a larger audience.

“It’s great to see people love my dad when they love his work,” he said.