Despite Minnesota’s reputation as a national leader in arts funding, state support flows overwhelmingly to white artists and institutions, leaving out many Black, Indigenous and Latina/o/x artists.
In a newly released book, University of Minnesota assistant professor of Chicano and Latino Studies Jessica Lopez Lyman focuses on something else for which the state has a national reputation — the snow that buries streets, trees and rooftops — as a metaphor for how state cultural investment minimizes the artistic contributions of communities of color.
“The way that Minnesota is positioned within the nation is really like the whiteout effect,” said Lyman.
While Minnesota artists also receive support from private and philanthropic foundations, the state’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, created through the 2008 Legacy Amendment, distributes nearly $9 million annually. Yet Minnesotans of color, who make up a quarter of the state’s population, receive just 7.1% of the fund’s awards, with Latina/o/x artists receiving 2.16% and Native artists 2.66%, according to Lyman.
The cost of the ‘Good Life’
Lyman’s book, “Place-Keepers: Latina/x Art, Performance, and Organizing in the Twin Cities,” traces how Minnesota has historically been framed in the country. In 1973, Time magazine highlighted former Gov. Wendell Anderson with the headline “The Good Life in Minnesota.” The cover shows Anderson holding a freshly caught northern pike, a white man seated behind him in a fishing boat and a sunlit lake framed by pine trees – a picture of Midwestern purity and prosperity that left communities of color out of the picture.
“We have to remember that during this period, there was no social media. Time was one of the main publications,” Lyman said.
Inside the same issue, an article titled “Minnesota: A State That Works” noted, “Blacks rioted in Minneapolis in 1966 and 1967, but with only 1% of the state’s population, they have not yet forced Minnesotans into any serious racial confrontation. Or at least, not an apocalyptic confrontation.”
“The assumption is that the Black Power movements based on self-determination were ‘world-ending, apocalyptic movements,’ and not one that was about liberation for Black people who have been systematically and historically oppressed in the country,” Lyman said. “We know what Samuel Myers calls the ‘Minnesota Paradox’ — that Black people have the worst quality of life, even though Minnesota is usually ranked two or three in the nation for the best quality of life.”
“This ‘good life,’ idyllic place, has been so detrimental for folks of color,” she added. “What I want to focus on in the book is, how are people creating life despite all that?”
Belonging in a changing city
Long before Lyman became an author or professor, she was performing spoken word as a 17-year-old at open mics across the Twin Cities.
In the early 2000s, through her teen and undergraduate years, she appeared at some of Minneapolis’ most formative cultural spaces: The Quest Club, formerly Glam Slam, the nightclub Prince opened in the early 1990s; Intermedia Arts, a platform for marginalized creatives; Cafe SouthSide, a queer community hub; Blue Nile, an Ethiopian restaurant on Franklin Avenue; and the University of Minnesota’s Appleby Hall.
Most of these spaces no longer exist. Cafe SouthSide, driven out by rising rent and a landlord who didn’t renew its lease, reflects the “economic strain to maintain an art-centered place in a neoliberal, gentrifying city,” Lyman writes in “Place-Keepers.”
She was born and raised in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood, with her ties to a broader Latino community forming in pieces — through Christmas trips to the West Side for tamales and summers spent with her mother’s family in California. She later earned her Ph.D. in Chicana and Chicano Studies from the University of California Santa Barbara.
“When I moved back, I was seeing all the ways that gentrification closed spaces that I loved,” Lyman said. “Seeing how drastically the neighborhoods, both in St. Paul and Minneapolis, changed while I was gone, really broke my heart.”
But she also returned to a community of Twin Cities artists using their work to sustain memory and belonging. These are the people she calls “Place-Keepers.”
“Place keeping means that we work very intentionally to maintain our home — our physical home, but also our sense of home,” Lyman said. “We look out for our neighbors and we understand that the gifts, talents and assets are already in the spaces we inhabit. We are not going to be bulldozed away or erased.”
Keeping culture alive
Shaped by interviews dating back to 2013, “Place-Keepers” traces the intertwined art and activism of Latina/x cultural workers across the region. Among them are Festival de las Calaveras founder Deborah Ramos, Puerto Rican singer-songwriter and state Representative Maria Isa, Afro-Caribbean artist Lady Midnight, Puerto Rican muralist Oliva Levins Holden, Salvadoran poet and playwright Lorena Duarte, and Serpentina Arts founder Maria Cristina Tavera.
Tavera said she feels a deep connection to her Mexican roots through her mother’s family, and she uses her art to nurture that bond.
“I have this nostalgia and yearning to be with them. Living so far away from them, I really wanted to make sure that my kids actually understood the culture,” Tavera said. “I see a lot of parallels in how artists are able to draw people in and really go against expectations and barriers in order to help the community move forward.”
The book follows these Twin Cities artists across movements — from Minnesota’s Line 3 pipeline resistance and Puerto Rico’s Hurricane Maria relief efforts to the 2020 Minneapolis uprising after the murder of George Floyd.
“There is not a single artist that I write about that does anything for themselves,” Lyman said. “Every single person in this space is so deeply rooted in their local community.”
Lyman draws on Gloria Anzaldúa’s idea of “nepantla,” or bridge-walker, to describe artists who move between art and activism — navigating the nonprofit arts sector without losing sight of their communities, even as cultural spaces come under threat.
“It’s no surprise that corporations like Target, who were so adamant in investing in arts and BIPOC artists — Black artists in particular after the uprising — are one of the first corporations to let go of DEI,” Lyman said.
“In fact, some of the artists I worked with have been preparing for this moment,” she added. “We’ve been preparing for the moment that all of a sudden the mainstream Minnesota arts organizations and foundations no longer find funding BIPOC artists sexy. We just have to keep doing what we do and that’s the beauty of artists. They’re going to make art with or without funding.”
Lyman’s book launch will be celebrated at El Colegio High School on Dec. 12 with performances, murals and music by featured artists, including Lady Midnight, Isa, and poets Teresa Ortiz and Lupe Castillo.
Date: Friday, Dec. 12
Time: 5:30 p.m.
Location: El Colegio High School, 4137 Bloomington Ave. S., Minneapolis
Cost: Free
For more information: Visit upress.umn.edu/event/lopezlyman-121225/
