A Message from Brad Engdahl, ASI Board Chair

A Message from Brad Engdahl

ASI Board Chair

The past year has been one of pain and struggle mixed with hope and opportunity.

The COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted, among other things, health and economic damage across our communities, especially on those who are most vulnerable. ASI has not been exempt from the pandemic’s consequences.

Despite the mandatory closure of the museum to visitors, ASI’s members and communities rallied to support the Institute economically and otherwise, including the so-important well-wishes of support.

The staff and volunteers at ASI responded with astounding creativity, resilience, resourcefulness and dedication. Unable to offer classes in person? No problem. We will simply create online courses, ranging from the culinary to crafts to languages. These virtual classes not only drew overwhelming numbers of participants, but revealed ASI’s reach to people across the country and the world. We have been teaching people in 33 states and across the Atlantic how to speak Swedish. ASI’s staff and volunteers turned crisis into success.

As if COVID were not enough, ASI and its communities were rocked by the murder of George Floyd by police in our neighborhood. A June 8, 1919, editorial in the Svenska Amerikanska Posten, of which Swan Turnblad was the publisher, noted that America had accorded “Blacks equality with whites, but a fulfillment has never been achieved.” It added: “There is no good reason for the current situation. It is shameful that this has defined us for so long, and it is high time that we move beyond it.” More than 100 years later, it remains “high time,” and ASI has escalated, internally and externally, its ongoing commitment and actions as a cultural museum to pursue equality and inclusion.

With ASI’s reopening to the public, the hum of discussions (although muffled by masks), the aromas of FIKA and the socially distanced stream of visitors through the mansion and exhibitions have returned.

Turnblad Mansion Salon

The Turnblad Mansion, our principal artifact, is older than the 1918 pandemic and the 1919 Swedish newspaper editorial on equality. It needs maintenance and improvements to enrich the experiences of our communities. The Board and staff have been actively planning this exciting undertaking, and the initial steps are underway. By preserving its character and improving its capabilities (imagine, for example, air conditioning and better lighting), the House that Transforms will itself be transformed for a future that, Swan Turnblad hoped, “will last 100,000 years.”

This year also has marked Bruce Karstadt’s 30th anniversary as President and CEO of ASI. Throughout his tenure, he has been the Bruce that Transforms, bringing ASI to its vibrant present and guiding it toward a vital future.

I am touched by the surge of support for ASI by its members and communities and inspired by the efforts of staff and volunteers. The Board also has responded with fervor, applying its rich diversity of interests, backgrounds, skills, perspectives and cultures to inform its work on behalf of ASI.

We look forward to the next 100,000 years.