Art Gallery
One reason James J. Hill built a new home on Summit Avenue was to showcase his impressive collection of French landscape paintings. The spacious, two-story, skylit room was considered a model of a modern gallery when the home was completed in 1891.
Grooves along the walls enabled paintings to be hung frame to frame, several tiers high, and the skylight flooded the room with natural light—with shade provided by the large canopy and 133 carbon filament light bulbs for evening viewing. Paintings by 19th century Romantic and Barbizon French masters such as Corot, Courbet, Millet, and Delacroix crowded the walls, bronze sculptures filled the floor space, and art books lined the shelves and tables.
A 1006-pipe mechanical action tracker organ stretched two stories tall on the west wall of the gallery. Installed in the house at the recommendation of the interior designers, the organ is still played most Saturdays and at many special events.
Current Exhibit
'Thank God and FDR...'
New Deal Art from Minnesota, Selections from the Ah-Gwah-Ching Archive
Opens May 3, 2008
The Minnesota Historical Society is the proud steward of the Ah-Gwah-Ching archive, a large collection of art from the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The archive consists of more the 160 items including prints, watercolors, oils and woodcarvings by such artists as Bob Brown, Henry Bukowski, Reathel Keppen, Dorothea Lau, Alexander Oja and Bennet Swanson. On view will be a selection of approximately 50 items highlighting this archive.
