By Marilyn Hagerty

As a child, Laurel Reuter fell in love with art. As founding director of the North Dakota Museum of Art, she vowed to make it the finest small museum in the world. For 30 years she has been on a mission to present contemporary art and collect a visual history of this region — such as the iron crosses the Germans from Russia brought to this country. Right now, she is in the early stages of arranging for an exhibit of Icelandic art that was nurtured by settlers in Canada and northeastern North Dakota.

“While some in our nation look on North Dakota as the end of the earth,” she says, “international artists are finding their way here.”

To make sure they know their way, Reuter travels the world in quest of art to display on the campus of the University of North Dakota. She has seen the Museum develop into a key center where musical events and unique exhibits annually engage 35,000 to 50,000 visitors and patrons.

Reuter had one of her finest hours in the fall of 1989 when the North Dakota Museum of Art moved from a portion of the third floor of UND’s Memorial Union to its own large brick building. One thousand came to view the opening painting show by Peter Dean and the exhibit by Barton Benes.

She faced her biggest challenge when flood waters rolled over the entire city in 1997. How, she wondered, could she keep the Museum afloat?

By making the museum a hub to salvage artistic endeavors in a city buried in sludge, Reuter was able to preserve the center as a haven for the arts. North Dakota’s Museum of Art was the subject of articles in the New York Times and was featured in two segments on CBS News Sunday Morning. And, during the months following the Flood of 1997, a history of emotions during the tragedy was preserved in words and photographs in four books that flowed from the North Dakota Museum of Art.

In the past seven years, the North Dakota Museum of Art has become established as a center that continually stages significant events, such as the appearance of the Chinese ambassador on his 2003 visit to Grand Forks.

In retrospect, Reuter says it was inevitable the North Dakota Museum of Art ceased being a department of UND and in 1996 became a nonprofit corporation with its own volunteer board of directors and a separate foundation board. The museum has been designated as North Dakota’s official art museum by the state legislature, but it receives no funding.

While the museum blossomed as a place where UND students as well as children of the region can view art at no admission cost, Reuter says being independent is harder than she had ever dreamed. The challenge is the unending need to raise funds to meet the museum’s $1 million annual budget. While UND provides the building and certain maintenance services, there is no direct financial support.

Reuter started working at the UND Art Galleries in the Memorial Union in the early 1970s when she was finishing her master’s degree in English. In 1985, the galleries became the Museum of Art and remained in the same location until 1989.

Fifteen years ago with funds left by the late Laura Christianson, the gracious old brick building that had been a women’s gymnasium since 1907 was renovated as a museum by Harvey Hoshour, a modernistic architect from Albuquerque. Under his guidance, a museum was created that is spacious, comfortable, and extremely fluent. Hoshour’s design uses windows with skylights to beautifully incorporate light. It allows viewers to experience art in a natural environment.

While the North Dakota Museum of Art features contemporary art, it brings in historical exhibitions that have a relationship to the population of the region. For instance, Reuter says the Library of Congress display on the Lewis and Clark Expedition: Mapping of America will be at the Museum in November and December.

Contemporary art is easy for people to understand, Reuter explains. Audiences relate to the art of their own time, and as they do so they become more knowledgeable and move back into history. Her own creativity as curator and writer for exhibitions and events seem boundless.

Still, she says ideas come from her staff and from her board. “I try to be open minded. You cannot build a museum by yourself.”

Reuter is generally credited for building the North Dakota Museum of Art into a gem. She works with help of donors, grants, board members, and a host of volunteers who seek to keep art alive on the Northern Plains. Reuter herself has a parallel career as a writer as well as curator-director of the museum. On her travels and in her garden, thoughts come for her essays and critiques. She recently published a book, Whole Cloth, and is working on a sequel, Threads. The books reflect her interest in the use of fiber as an artistic medium.

Freelancer Marilyn Hagerty writes frequently for Dimensions. Her work appears regularly in the Grand Forks Herald.