Illustration by Andy Sturdevant for “Ghost Crawl,” courtesy of mnartists.org. A present-day rendering of what used to be the home site of the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota (WARM), one of the key arts groups in the 1970s gallery scene.

If you have an interest in local art history, you won’t want to miss the panel discussion at the Minnesota Museum of American Art (MMAA) this week: artist and writer Andy Sturdevant will moderate a conversation with local critics and gallerists, taking stock of how the Twin Cities visual arts community, specifically its gallery scene, has evolved in the last 30 years.

It is an event connected to the MMAA’s current exhibition, “The Studio Sessions: Minnesota Artists in the 1970s,” which features posed and candid studio portraits of Minnesota artists, taken by photographer Victor Bloomfield when they were still just emerging, on the cusp of what, for many of them, would be international recognition. The generous selection of shots on view include pictures of notables like Frank Gaard, Warren MacKenzie, Nancy Randall, George Morrison, Katherine Nash and Harriet Bart; the portraits are displayed alongside examples of art work – paintings, sculpture, ceramics, prints – by each of the featured artists.

Victor Bloomfield, “Untitled (Harriet Bart),” 1978, inkjet pigment print,8 x 12 inches. Collection Victor Bloomfield, courtesy of MMAA

This week’s panel conversation – “The Commercial Art Gallery Scene: Then and Now” – will include Minneapolis Star-Tribune art critic Mary Abbe; current gallery directors Jennifer Phelps (Burnet Gallery) and Sally Johnson (Groveland Gallery); as well as the former Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program coordinator for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Stewart Turnquist.

An aside: Sturdevant, this week’s MMAA conversation moderator, wrote a fascinating article for mnartists.org a couple of years ago. You should read it if this kind of micro history interests you: a charming, illustrated “ghost crawl” through the Minneapolis warehouse district’s gallery scene, 20 years after its heyday.

Another related note: the Walker Art Center is opening a big retrospective of early Pop Art by “Spoonbridge and Cherry” artist Claes Oldenburg this weekend that should be on your radar as well. “Claes Oldenburg: The Sixties” brings together more than 300 pieces by the artist from all over the world, “including prized works from the Walker Art Center’s collection such as ‘Upside Down City‘ (1962) and ‘Shoestring Potatoes Spilling from a Bag‘ (1966). The show also highlights Oldenburg’s key role in Happenings and other interdisciplinary performance art of the early 1960s.”

“The Commercial Art Gallery Scene: Then and Now,” a panel discussion with artist and writer Andy Sturdevant; gallerists Jennifer Phelps and Sally Johnson; critic Mary Abbe; and former MAEP coordinator Stewart Turnquist will take place Thursday, September 19 at 6:30 pm in the Minnesota Museum of American Art Project Space (a Knight Arts grantee), 332 N. Robert St., St. Paul. The related exhibition, “The Studio Sessions: Minnesota Artists in the 1970s,” will be on view through October 20. For more information, including gallery hours and a full calendar of events, visit mmaa.org.