Remembering Dakota They came and they went . .

“I came to North Dakota because I wanted to see where Teddy Roosevelt went after his wife died. It turned out to be a place where you could empty your soul into the sky,” according to American landscape photographer Greg Conniff. He is one of thirty-six artists from across the United States in Remembering Dakota. This timely exhibition adds another chapter to the history of art in and of North Dakota. “Places are known and remembered by their images and the sensations and emotions they provoke,” according to Laurel Reuter, Director of the North Dakota Museum of Art. While photographers dominate the exhibition, painters, sculptors, and printmakers also assume their places within this newly identified North Dakota canon. Many, such as sculptor Marlene Alt who grew up in New Leipzig, North Dakota, have gone elsewhere. Still others, such as Tom Arndt, married North Dakotans. Some, such as Nancy Friese, returned to buy back ancestral lands. Photographers, known for their passion for road trips, contribute aerial photos, photos taken through car windows, portraits of both the people and the land, and narrations of subjects that range from youngsters’ sport places to prisons glowing in the night. Rites of hunting appear and reappear throughout the show. Daily life is ultimately at the heart of the exhibition. James Dean and Todd Strand spent years making pictures in North Dakota which, when added up and heaped together with the work of their fellow artists, create a vast and complicated vision of the place and the people who inhabit this landscape. Artists in the exhibition: Marlene Alt, Tom Arndt, Todd Arsenault, Jeff Brouws, Wendy Burton, Greg Conniff, Ward Davenny, Lynn Davis, Joe Deal, James Dean, Jim Dow, Terry Evans, Charles Forsman, Nancy Friese, Emmet Gowin, David Graham, Gudmundur Ingólfsson, Todd Hebert, Abner Hershberger, Stuart Klipper, Peter Latner, Brian Lesteberg, Roddy MacInnes, Guy Nelson, Justin Newhall, Anna Pedersen, Robert Polidori, Dirk Reinartz, Ingrid Restemayer, Frank Sampson, Fritz Scholder, Jes Schrom, Paul Shambroom, Todd Strand, Peter Haakon Thompson, and Steve Tourlentes.