Native Son

Tom Arndt returned to Minnesota in 2006 after living in Chicago for fifteen years, but in a sense he never really left. “I wore out a car and a half making trips back over the years,” says Arndt. “Wherever we are, wherever we go, I’m talking about Minnesota. People are like, ‘Shut up already.’ ”

Not many people have as keen a feel for Minnesota as Arndt, except maybe his longtime friend Garrison Keillor. Like Keillor, Arndt tells stories about his beloved native soil, only he does so in images instead of words. Tom Arndt’s Minnesota, the photographer’s “homage” to his home state currently on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, offers an inkling of what Arndt sees through his camera lens that inspires so much passion.

The seventy-five black-and-white photographs in the exhibition represent a small fraction of the thousands of photographs Arndt has taken over a span of four decades. They trace the changing cultural landscape as well as the timeless Minnesota of small-town festivals, Fourth of July celebrations, and, of course, the state fair—what Arndt calls the “real soul of Minnesota.”

Arndt spent his formative years immersed in the photography scene that formed around Jerome Liebling at the University of Minnesota and Ted Hartwell at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. He had his first major museum exhibition—Tom Arndt’s America—at the Institute in 1984 and immediately started planning a show about Minnesota. It’s taken more than two decades, but Tom Arndt’s Minnesota has finally arrived.

“When Ted Hartwell asked me whether there’s another exhibition I could do, I told him I’d like to do a show about home,” says Arndt. “A show that speaks to what I love, what is so endearing about living here.”

Through June 21. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2400 3rd Ave. S., Mpls., 612-870-3131