Fargo Standard

Uff Da: The Folk Art of Emily Lunde 

North Dakota Museum of Art Announces New Rural Arts Traveling Exhibition 

Barnes County Historical Museum

315 Central Ave N

Valley City, ND 58072

701-845-0966

Tuesday, November 1 — Thursday, November 18, 2022 

Opening reception Friday, November 11 from 7:00 – 8:00 pm 

Speaker: Suzanne Kelley, PhD 

Emily Wilhelmina Dufke Lunde was born in northern Minnesota and, as she says, "with a handle like that you had to have a sense of humor." Laurel Reuter, Director of the Museum says of this North Dakota folk artist: "Were the people of North Dakota to name their living treasures, Emily Lunde would certainly be among them. She is one of the state's eminent folk artists and unofficial cultural historians." As both artist and author, Mrs. Lunde has recorded the life of Scandinavian immigrants settling the prairies and small towns of the Red River Valley during the early 20th century. 

Mrs. Lunde did not begin to paint until the 1950s and always painted from memory. Her oils are widely collected. Dr. Robert Bishop, the late Director of the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City, personally gave over forty of her paintings to the Art in Embassies program for loan around the world. 

I amaze myself when I think about what I was doing at the time. I was between five and ten years old when I perceived these things that went into my paintings. I was analyzing the adults. I guess you can't fool children as much as you want to.  

Emily Lunde 

Suzanne Kelley: Originally from Alaska, Suzzanne now lives in West Fargo and works in the Fargo-Moorhead metropolitan area. She is editor-in-chief of North Dakota State University Press and also teaches courses about publishing as assistant professor of practice. She has directed the publication of more than 60 books of scholarly and literary non-fiction, fiction and poetry, mostly in physical forms but also digital. She writes, teaches and publishes, along with conducting her own lines of research in memory and memory art topics. Suzanne’s dissertation, “Preserving an Era of Place”: Memory Painters of the Plains and Prairies, highlights Emily Lunde as a key folk painter of the upper Midwest. 

Rural Arts Initiative 

The North Dakota Museum of Art is the State’s official art museum. As it is located in Grand Forks, it can be difficult for schools to plan day trips to the Museum. Due to the great distances some schools face, the Museum started touring exhibitions to towns throughout North Dakota through its Rural Arts Initiative program, which started in 2003. Since then, exhibitions have been installed in all corners of North Dakota, including smaller towns such as Crosby, Pekin, and Bowman, and larger cities such as Jamestown, Fargo, and Bismarck. The Museum’s Education Department delivers, installs, and de-installs exhibitions of original artwork free-of-charge to North Dakota communities.  

A Primary goal of the Museum’s Rural Arts Initiative program is to provide North Dakota schools with quality arts education opportunities. The Museum works with community members to bring schools within a 50 to 60-mile radius of the exhibition site to participate in this unique arts education program. To assist schools with out-of-pocket expenses, the Museum offers travel reimbursements for North Dakota schools wishing to participate. Lesson plans and activities are also available for free download on the Museum’s website.  

For booking information, please contact Matthew Anderson at 701-777-4195 or manderson@ndmoa.com. For more information concerning traveling exhibitions visit: www.ndmoa.com/Rural-Arts. 

BCHS

315 Central Ave N

Valley City, ND 58072

701-845-0966

Original source can be found here.