Let’s assume those are props. Right? The MIA would never actually have allowed kids to horse around with real spears and helmets, like those on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the third floor hallway. Right?? They sure look real, though.
That was a long time ago (well past the statute of limitations on any liability). And in the MIA archives, where this picture was found, there’s another image that shows a bit more of the scene: the boys are performing, for dozens of other kids gathered around in a gallery. Totally sanctioned.
Admiring the 31st Annual Local Art Show, held at the MIA in 1945.
Here’s another image, much less rambunctious if no less staged. Scrawled on the back of the photograph: “Carol Larson, Janet Kruse, Beverly Hamilton look at Miriam Bennett’s ‘Promise.’ 31st Annual Local Art Show, 1945.” (If you’re reading, Carol, Janet, Beverly: did you always look so enthralled with art?) Bennett was one of the founders of the Society of Minnesota Sculptors, created after the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York came to jury a similar show of local art at the MIA, in 1943, and remarked approvingly of the local sculpture scene. These girls, anyway, look very approving indeed.
Girls thinking, “Cute, but no Frank Sinatra,” as the boys disembowel each other with medieval weapons.
Finally, we have this scene of girls in their Sunday best thinking completely pure thoughts about a Renaissance-era dreamboat. Someday, ladies, someday.
These were not scenes of a Family Day in the modern sense, the monthly Sunday of music, art making, and other kid-friendly activities that is consistently one of the most popular days at the MIA. (The next Family Day, on July 13, is opening day of “Marks of Genius: 100 Extraordinary Drawings from the MIA,” featuring plenty of drawing opportunities.)
But they do suggest a long history of hosting families in the galleries. The museum’s founders, after all, had families of their own, and what they wanted was the city’s first public museum, not another gallery. A place for anyone’s imagination to run wild, even if you—for the most part—were expected not to.