A Message from Bruce Karstadt ASI President & CEO
When we planned programs and exhibitions for the 2019-20 year, we had our 90th anniversary year in mind, for it was in December 1929 that the Turnblad family founded the American Swedish Institute and set us on a course of long service to the community. We settled upon a theme, extra/ordinary, which was inspired by a concept brought to life by the book A to Zåäö: Playing with History at the American Swedish Institute, featuring watercolors of objects in our collection by Tara Sweeney and whimsical pen-and-ink drawings by her son Nate Christopherson. This book (which I’m proud to say was nominated for best children’s book at the Minnesota Book Awards) is a fun romp through all 29 letters of the Swedish alphabet. To honor our 90th anniversary, we filled the mansion with unique, significant and beautiful pieces from our material collections, together with stories behind those objects and original works by Tara and Nate, in an exhibit titled extra/ordinary: Playing with History at ASI.
4
The American Swedish Institute
The title extra/ordinary was intended only as a descriptor of our anniversary exhibit. But it unexpectedly served as a theme for the entire past year, as we’ve faced extraordinary challenges — both closing due to a global pandemic and then civil unrest triggered by George Floyd’s murder — that have prompted dramatic changes and successful innovations in how we work to serve and bring our community together in fulfillment of our mission. The extra/ordinary exhibition became the longest-running one in our history, spanning 12 months. It also was perhaps our most widely seen exhibit ever, through the innovative efforts of my incredibly talented colleagues in creating digital and live-stream tours that brought it to thousands of households around the world. We’ve been Zooming this past year with a lot of you — teaching Swedish, craft and culinary classes (to more students than ever before) and sustaining important traditions such as our Christmas market (Julmarknad) and Midsommar.
