​Minnesota Museum of American Art

The Minnesota Museum of American Art, also widely referred to as “The M”, was founded in 1894 as the St. Paul School of Fine Arts, and it began collecting artwork for instructional purposes beginning in 1927. Then, beginning in the 1940s, the school began to collect for the purposes of exhibiting work outside of only scholarly efforts.

In 1969, the St. Paul School of Fine Arts became the Minnesota Museum of Art, and in 1992 added the term “American” to reflect the direction and intention of the museum.

The M’s collection houses more than 5,000 works showcasing the unique artistic expression of American artists from antiquity to modern day art. Included in the collection is Thomas Hart Benton’s Shocking Corn (1945), a painting of a rural American landscape. In this painting, Benton exemplified Regionalism, whilst connecting people with their surroundings through art.