Culture C O L L E C T I O N
PHOTOGRAPHY BY SPACECRAFTING
“Take, for example, Geli Korzhev,” he notes. “I know what his studio smelled like, how the light filtered through the grimy Moscow windows and how carefully his still-life objects were arranged because I visited more than 60 times. Knowing an artist personally changes my relationship with their work. I love to stand at arm’s length from my paintings and imagine the artist having done the same.” That kind of curiosity has served Johnson well. As a boy in Iowa, he began making archery arrows, and by age 17, he was selling them. He later invested in real estate, oil and a manufacturing company that produced wooden duck decoys. Soon they were being sold as home décor in some 75 stores Johnson owned across the country. But it was when he purchased the Overland Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, that his passion for collecting really took hold. His devotion to Soviet art hasn’t gone unnoticed. He was named an honorary consul of the Russian Federation and in 2006 received the Order of Friendship medal from President Vladimir Putin, the highest award given to a non-Russian. During a time of tense Russian–American relations, Johnson serves as a sort of art liaison, loaning his works to museums, universities and other cultural institutions around the world. “The arts have been one of the very few channels of communication to remain open between the United States and
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Artful Living
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Magazine of the North
Russia throughout a changing political climate,” he says. “We have been very careful to remain apolitical.” A modest man, he doesn’t consider himself an expert but instead a novice with a really good eye and a great deal of luck. Still, a few of his acquisitions stand out, and one work in particular carries special meaning. “‘Sunday in the Village’ by Nikolai Dmitriev-Orenburgsky has hung behind my desk for as long as I can remember,” Johnson notes. “Each of the villagers is so vividly and intricately painted that they seem capable of dancing straight off the canvas.” That work was on view at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. And Johnson’s father, who died when the collector was just an infant, attended that event. “Being a dairy farmer, he probably didn’t spend a lot of time at a Russian exhibition,” he surmises. “But over the years I have convinced myself that he saw it. And if he did, it would be the only painting in the entire collection that both my Dad and I could have seen.” It’s this very kinship with art — and the supreme desire to share it with others — that keeps Johnson moving forward. His Museum of Russian Art is forever evolving, expanding its focus to photography, porcelain, printmaking, textiles and other media. The institution’s lively and varied exhibitions have become a mainstay of the thriving Twin Cities arts scene.