Image Harriet Bart, Sunset Gates, 2020, acrylic and mixed media on canvas 64 x 94 x 1 ½ in. Photo by Rik Sferra

What: An exhibition of five selected artworks by Harriet Bart.

Where: Traffic Zone Gallery at Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art/250 3rd Avenue North, Minneapolis, MN 55401

When: October 18 – November 19, 2021

Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm, and by appointment. Free and open to the public.

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With a career that spans over 50 years, Harriet Bart has produced a prolific body of multidisciplinary artwork. Throughout, her early work in textile and continued fascination with the written word informs both her process and artistic outcome. Material Matters is an intimate exhibition that features five select works, all utilizing cloth and text. These works reference topical experiences of war, migration, displacement, erasure, and looming threats to democracy.  Included in the exhibition is an excerpt from the site-specific installation, Leavings/Belongings, a durational work focused on the continued crisis of women and children refugees in the United States.  A large-scale installation of this work was most recently shown at SITE: Santa Fe in the exhibition DISPLACED, 2020.  In addition, three works on canvas will be on view, including Sunset Gates, 2020.  This work uses paint, collage, stitching and stencil, incorporating text from Emma Lazarus’s poem, The New Colossus, inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. The piece speaks to current discord over issues of immigration and the erosion of the American values of freedom and hospitality. The sweeping theatricality of Bart’s work invites the viewer to make layers of associations, to ask questions about the self, culture and history, and calls on us to reexamine and remember—to not forget.

Artist Biography

Harriet Bart (Minneapolis MN) is a conceptual artist working across disciplines and media that addresses urgent contemporary issues including the devastations of war, the complexities of memorialization, the emotional dimensions of space, and the gendering of labor. Bart’s artwork has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Germany, and she has completed more than a dozen public art commissions in the United States, Japan, and Israel.  She has received fellowships from the Bush Foundation, McKnight Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Yaddo, NEA Arts Midwest, and the Minnesota State Arts Board, and three Minnesota Book Awards. Her work is part of numerous museum, university, and private collections including the Jewish Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, National Gallery of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Walker Art Center, and the Weisman Art Museum. In 2020, the Weisman Art Museum presented Harriet Bart: Abracadabra and Other Forms of Protection, the first retrospective and monograph of her work. Bart is a guest lecturer, curator, and founding member of W.A.R.M. and the Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art in Minneapolis, MN.

Mission Statement

Traffic Zone Gallery is operated by Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art. TZCVA supports the work of mid-career professional artists with high-quality, affordable studios and the engagement of audiences with gallery exhibitions, open studio events, art classes and workshops