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Museum to host ‘Uff Da, The Folk Art of Emily Lunde’

By Vicki Hoffart - | May 4, 2023

Submitted Photo Rugby residents Jodi and Paul Schaan hold a painting they purchased from North Dakota Folk Artist Emily Lunde in the 1970s.

The Prairie Village Museum is hosting Uff Da, The Folk Art of Emily Lunde, sponsored by the North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks, ND, as part of their Rural Arts Initiative. The exhibit will be at the Prairie Village Museum May 1 – May 28, 2023. This period coincides with the times that many schools schedule museum tours, which puts the display in the right place at the right time to carry out a goal of the Rural Arts Initiative.

The Rural Arts Initiative is an educational outreach program that works to encourage and empower rural school students and their teachers to actively participate in learning through the arts. Feedback from educators and families in rural areas indicated that there was inadequate exposure to the visual arts due to lack of funding, few museums and great distances. This program works to provide exposure opportunities to visual art education. Schools can apply for financial assistance to attend these programs. Lesson plans and additional exhibit information are available at this link: ndmoa.com/rural-arts/.

They are available by clicking on one of the paintings and are very interesting. There is a narrative by Lunde of her life beginning at the time her father died and she went to live with grandparents in northern Minnesota. There are also extensive lesson plans for anyone interested in some detailed information about viewing the visual arts.

Emily Wilhelmina Dufke Lunde was born in Minnesota in 1914 to Swedish parents. Her father died when she was five years old, and she and three siblings were raised on her grandparent’s farm. Life there was difficult. Lunde states that her grandmother was not a happy person and very strict. She was buddies with her grandfather however. She left the farm at age eighteen and went to Grand Forks and worked as a maid for a time before meeting Leonard Lunde, getting married, and raising a family of four children. She did not start to paint seriously until the early 1970’s. Her art and writing depict Scandinavian life in the Red River Valley in the early 20th century. Lunde did memory paintings, so her subjects were things that she remembered personally of that time.

Lunde’s art is displayed in museums and other venues throughout the world. Her paintings are found in US Embassies under the Friends of Art and Preservation in Embassies Project. Dr. Robert Bishop, a former director of the Folk Art Museum in New York City, included Lunde and her work in his book on American folk art and painters. He also donated over forty of her paintings to the Art in Embassies Project.

One of Lunde’s paintings is displayed locally in the home of Jodi and Paul Schaan. They have graciously allowed it to be included in the display at the museum. Jodi’s father, Earl Loken, who has always been interested in various artists and their works, obtained the painting, along with two others, directly from Emily Lunde in the late 1970s. He said he bought them from her at her home and that she was quite a visitor. He found new owners for the other two, but Jodi has retained possession of this one. The museum appreciates the opportunity to display the painting.

This exhibit will be available for viewing at the Prairie Village Museum during regular hours until May 28th. There will also be an Open House on Thursday, May 25th, from 5:30 – 7:30 PM. There will be some special programming on that evening.