Category: Uncategorized

What do Wittgenstein and the Hula Dance have in common? Not much, actually. That’s the point of Mixed Tastes: Tag Team Lectures on Unrelated Topics.  “Culture has expertise in all its forms,” says Adam Lerner, director and chief animator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver.  He seeks out people who know things and arranges them in unexpected pairs.

After the meeting at MCA, I stopped at Art+Anthropology, then went on to lunch at an organic cafe attached to an old taxi hub turned mixed-used creative complex.  My afternoon visit to the RINO Cultural District included a tomato farm tucked in between railyard warehouses. “Industrial nature,” is how local artist-entrepreneur Tracy Weil described it.  Interesting intersections between people and places were at happily play throughout Denver.

It’s not surprising that creative types would find new ways to work together, indeed they always do.  What struck me about Denver was how pleasantly they were going about it.  Friendly competition had gone one step further into citywide collaboration, and these interactions defined a new standard for how the creative industries operate.

Omaha was an immersion in visual and conceptual art. I visited the Hot Shops Art Center, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, KANEKO, Film Streams, and El Museo Latino. Though I had interesting conversations with all involved, I felt strangely disconnected by the time I left. There was an unsettling feeling that an important insight was alluding me.

I called Ree Kaneko from the road, somewhere on Route 80 heading west out of Nebraska. “Artists give people permission to do things differently,” she said. The glowing molten glass, the giant spiral head, and the ex-votos imbued with prayers of safe passage, it all began to make sense.  The social purpose of art delves deep. Art interrupts our regular narratives and causes us to think differently, or at least to be reminded that different thoughts are possible.

If anything, the Twin Cities are practical. Everywhere I looked, I found examples of sensible people who make things work.  A restaurant stayed open late to feed restaurant workers a meal they’d enjoy.  A bed-and-breakfast created a community by providing international visitors with a few simple rules of engagement. A mind-melding show at the Walker Art Center explained the history of conceptual art in America in perfectly accessible terms.

It’s been a pleasure to remember how good conversations work too, loosening up logic, giving it shape and story. Love, effort, experience, music, heritage—it’s all connected.  Erin McLennon and I had it figured out over two diet cokes and a plate of cajun steak tips with horseradish sauce.