Mrs. Minnesota, Betty Bach, 1958 from the Minnesota Historical Society Collections
Do you like thinking and talking about land use and history? What a silly question, of course you do. Well, we’re having a Streets.mn outing and you should come.
The Minnesota History Center recently opened a new exhibit called Suburbia. Through an exploration of building, living, and shopping in the suburbs, “guests are invited to look back and reflect on the successes and failures of Suburbia and what’s in store for the future.” Sounds neat, right?
WHAT: Group outing to the Suburbia exhibit.
WHERE: Minnesota History Center at 345 W. Kellogg Blvd in St. Paul.
WHEN: Tuesday, November 17th at 6pm.
WHO: Everyone is welcome.
COST: Free on Tuesdays! We might do a drink with appetizers afterwards.
HOW DO I GET THERE? I’ll be biking over from Minneapolis so you can join me if you’d like, comment here or on Twitter to stay on the loop. Otherwise, it’s right on the Green Line [Capitol/Rice Street stop].
I went to it and found it fascinating. It very much explains suburbia’s populist roots, showing how small and modest suburbia was at first, and then how much homes grew in size.
However, it could include a lot more about how much the government, especially FDR/Truman, created suburbia and office parks through policy.
It has an exhibit on Edina Country Club without delving into its exclusionary foundation: new Jewish, no Catholic, no non-white. The exhibit discusses racial zoning, but Country Club, which is pre-New Deal, was a telling and extreme example of racism in suburbia.
Although I must say Edina would likely sue. And that might be more trouble than the exhibit would want.
it seems like a failure for an exhibit that’s about the successes and failures of suburbia to not talk about exclusionary policies. Do they at least bring up race covenants and redlining?
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