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Why are there no paintings of slave ships? Dave Casey ponders that question while standing near a collection of historic, traditional ship portraits and seascapes.

“Clearly this is a story that they didn't even want to tell at the time,” says Casey, the museum’s director of engagement about the exhibit that closes this weekend.

The paintings are part of an expansive and challenging exhibition at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona. 

“A Nation Takes Place: Navigating Race and Water in Contemporary Art” 

opened in August and will close March 2. The exhibition was curated by an artist-scholar duo, the Twin Cities-based Tia-Simone Gardner and the News Orleans-based Shana M. griffin.

“We’re really looking at the untold stories of Indigenous and Black peoples in this country around water,” said Casey.

The show spans oceans and rivers, time and the birth of a nation, or the “violent formation” of the U.S., as it explores slavery, genocide, colonialism and extraction.

The collection juxtaposes historic paintings and sculptures with contemporary artworks, with loans from 40 lending partners worldwide. It features artworks by Midwest artists, including Gordon Coon’s 2019 flag print “We Cannot Be Redacted” and internationally renowned artists, such as Kara Walker, Kent Monkman and Kwame Akoto-Bamfo.

The museum commissioned the 2024 sculpture “Nkyinkyim: Insisu” by the Ghana artist Akoto-Bamfo specifically for this exhibition. It is the most visually haunting piece in the entire show. Created from Ghanaian clay and iron, the sculpture shows a nude female figure in chains, her neck trapped in an iron shackle. Busts of two male figures stare up at her.

“He’s creating these series of sculptures of heads and busts of people that were stolen into slavery in Ghana and taken to the United States,” Casey said.

In the exhibition, the sculpture is deliberately placed to follow the historic seafaring paintings.

“You come around the corner, you’re immediately faced with this very striking, very realistic view into slavery, whereas many of the works around it might be a little more abstract, this one, you can’t deny what's going on here when you look at it.”

The sculpture is part of Akoto-Bamfo’s Nkyinkyim series, which 

draws on the funeral sculptural tradition of 

. When the exhibition closes, the museum will send the artwork to Ghana’s 

Nkyinkyim Museum to join the thousands of other sculptures in the series

The museum also has a new exhibition on view in its literary arts gallery space curated by Ojibwe poet Heid E. Erdrich. 

shows the work of multidisciplinary Native artists from Minnesota including Cole Redhorse Taylor, Tashia Hart, Jonathan Thunder, Gwen Nell Westerman and Courtney M. Leonard. All the artists featured have written or illustrated books.

“The shoreline is a very important gathering place to tell stories, whether it’s a riverbank or the lakeshore,” says Casey of the show’s theme.

On view for the first time is a “Night at London House Road” — a colossal 2025 painting by Duluth-based Red Lake Ojibwe artist Jonathan Thunder. 

Casey says the 15-foot-long piece is about the artist’s return to Minnesota after living out of state. It features the Duluth shoreline of Lake Superior as a backdrop to a surreal domestic scene with a figure in a clawfoot tub and an encroaching large catlike creature riding a wave. To one side of the tub, is an artist with canvas and easel.

In a neighboring gallery is the cinematic photography of Minneapolis photographer Shelly Mosman in 

 Here, Mosman has created water-inspired portraits, often featuring Minnesotans with their pets.

“She doesn’t prop animals with people. So when you see a snake with a woman that's her snake, or the dog with a little boy that's his dog,” Casey said. “Shelly creates scenes in her studio using backdrops and costumes that are very stylized. So they have this aura of another era.”

“Once Upon A Shore” is on view through Jan. 4, 2026. “Currents” is on view through April 27, 2025.

Alex V. Cipolle

Author

The Minnesota Marine Art Museum’s “A Nation Takes Place” reexamines marine art by highlighting the overlooked histories of Indigenous and Black peoples. Plus an exhibit curated by Ojibwe poet Heid E. Erdrich and one featuring photographer Shelly Mosman.

Bailey Bolton, courtesy Minnesota Marine Art Museum

Bailey Bolton courtesy Minnesota Marine Art Museum

Bailey Bolton courtesy Minnesota Marine Art Museum.

Alex V. Cipolle | MPR News

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