Surveying the swelling banks of the mighty Mississippi on Mud Island.

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Speed Dating with Peter Eleey (Walker), Megan Leafblad (Minneapolis College of Art and Design) and artists from the Hartland Heartland initiative!

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Here we go again.

After the last visits in December the thought process about the collaborative exhibition of an US Museum and a museum in Europe have been circulating and come more into shape by us curators (Charles Esche, Stephanie Smith and Kerstin Niemann). This time we travel, explore, talk about and visit places and people with a more focused agenda, but still a series of questions of where this open research process will take us and how we will translate it into an exhibition. The travel will take us first to Minnesota, then Chicago (Illinois) to catch up with Stephanie Smith (co-curator) and altogether we plan to explore the city of Detroit (Michigan), which neither of us has been to before.

First stop of our trip will take us to Minnesota, the state of the US where the Mississippi originates (in Duluth) from Lake Superior and forms into a river.

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For the third research trip, Charles Esche and Kerstin Niemann of the Van Abbemuseum have returned to the Heartland area in the United States. This concludes an extensive investigation for the upcoming multidisciplinary project Heartland, which kicks off on October 3 in Eindhoven. Heartland, initiated by the Van Abbemuseum is a collaboration between many partners, including the Muziekcentrum Frits Philips, Eindhoven and the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago. The exhibition curators travel this time to Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit and Memphis to do on site research, make studio visits and lead workshops that will form the developing concept and contents of the Heartland project. An extensive visit to the Walker Art Institute in Minneapolis and the Ann Harbor University of Michigan is part of the tour.
Heartland is multi-dimensional project in Eindhoven featuring existing and newly commissioned art works and an international music programme called Into the Heart of Music. The project is dedicated to art and music that emerges out of the area’s rich cultural and geographic diversity. The programme also includes a series of debates and lectures, two publications, an artists-in-residency programme and various special projects with local and international partners. It is the first time that a project of this scope has been initiated in Eindhoven. The official premiere / opening is scheduled for 3 and 4 October in Eindhoven where the project will run until 25 January 2009. After that, part of the exhibition will travel to Chicago. The collaboration between the Van Abbemuseum and the Smart Museum promises to combine insider and outsider perspectives on visual culture in the region in which individual artworks will be related to each other while being able to speak clearly about particular cultural, social and natural phenomena.

Why heartland?
The image that we in the Netherlands have of the US is mainly the result of media reports coming from the major cities on the East and West coasts, as well as the main trade centres of the US. With Heartland, we want to steer away from these positive and negative clichés. The Heartland, the interior of the US on the banks of the Mississippi and its tributaries, has seen many crucial historical developments. With its diverse indigenous and immigrant cultures, the ‘delta’ is a benchmark for the country’s multilayered identity. It has become an intriguing mix of old and new traditions, where it seems that the social and political climate is largely determined by religion and race. Examples that have touched the region in significant ways include the population’s steady move westward, the Civil Rights Movement, the ebb and flow of the many waves of religiosity and its constant development as a major economic force. These factors have found their way into the art and culture produced in the region or commissioned for this exhibition. The Heartland project also coincides with the next US presidential elections and will inevitably form a artistic and musical counterpoint to the non-stop media coverage of politicians and reporters.

At our first stop in Minneapolis, Minnesota we met up with staff from the Walker Art Center as well as artists and other cultural activists of the Minneapolis arts community…