Clara Kim April 15, 1998

"There's a piece in the [100 Years of Sculpture] exhibition, it's a piece by Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds. It's a re-creation of an installation, a commission that the Walker did back in 1990, and it's called Building Minnesota, and it's a piece that honors 40 Dakota men who were executed in 1862 in Mankato and at Fort Snelling, here in the state of Minnesota. And what I found interesting about the object, as I was doing more and more research about it, was the kind of reaction that the people had to the piece. There were various commentaries in the Star Trib [Minneapolis' Star Tribune newspaper] when the piece first came out. People wrote letters to the museum, to Walker curators, and not all of it [was] good. Some people were kind of surprised that the Walker would do something like this: 'Why do we take Abraham Lincoln--President Lincoln's name--in vain?' and whatnot. "So there was a lot of reaction that came out of this art commission, and in a lot of ways I think it's an ideal aspect of art in that it's able to elicit those kind of responses, instead of [being] something that kind of sits in a museum and just kind of passively exists. I think what's great about it is that there was all this commentary coming out of it--people reacting to other people's commentary in the Star Trib. There were various things on the [Walker's] Web site that people were reacting to. So that was very fascinating to me, to see that dynamic, to see that this art thing 'talks' about political issues and was able to elicit these really strong emotions and these very pertinent questions about history, about who we are, about what we think and how we think."

Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds Building Minnesota Click here to find out more about Building Minnesota.

100 Years of Sculpture: From the Pedestal to the Pixel Gallery Three: The Natural, The Social, and The Technological