Official Love

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Collective Farm Brigadier with Girlfriend 1957 Vasili F. Kondratyuk *

We recently had the pleasure of visiting the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis. We first heard about the museum when we interviewed Minnesota artist Mary Pettis. She mentioned the inspiration she has found in its collections. Mary met us for our tour of the current exhibition - Romance in Soviet Art.

The Museum of Russian art is unique in North America and features exhibitions of artwork seldom before displayed in the United States. It is housed in the fully renovated Spanish Colonial-Revival building, formerly the Mayflower Congregational Church. The museum came into being through the extraordinary efforts of Raymond E. Johnson, an art dealer in Scottsdale, AZ. Since 1989 Mr. Johnson and his assistants have researched Russian Impressionist paintings created during the Soviet era. Johnson sponsored the first retail exhibition of these paintings in 1991 and began what is believed to be the largest privat…