Congratulations to the 2022 Arrowhead Arts Awards Recipients
The Arrowhead Regional Arts Council (ARAC) has announced its recipients of the 23rd Annual Arrowhead Arts Awards. Each of the recipients were nominated because of their remarkable contributions to the arts in the Arrowhead Region. ARAC’s mission is to facilitate and encourage local arts development. The recipients of this year’s Arrowhead Arts Awards are great examples of this mission.
The recipient of the George Morrison Artist Award is Keith Swanson. This award recognizes an individual artist whose body of work has made a significant contribution to the arts over an extended period of time. Swanson received his undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota and his Master’s Degree in Educational Instruction from the University of Wisconsin Superior. He retired as the Director of Music at Hermantown High School after teaching orchestra for 43 years. He has conducted for the UMD Symphony Orchestra, Northland Opera Theater Experience, and Colder by the Lake. In July of 2019, he led the Lake Superior Orchestra in Rossini’s “Overture to the Italian in Algiers” and the late local composer Brad Bombardier’s “XXV.” This year marks Swanson’s 30th year with the Itasca Orchestra. Swanson has earned the respect of talented musicians from Duluth who perform with the Grand Rapids based orchestra on a regular basis. Swanson’s passion for creating exceptional music has helped to elevate and inspire highly talented regional artists, giving them a stage and an audience and pushing them to achieve their highest potential.
Through Keith’s leadership, he has led the orchestra from a fledgling organization to a strong community orchestra which is respected statewide and is beloved and cherished in its home community.
This year’s recipient of the Maddie Simons Arts Advocate Award is Anne Dugan. This award recognizes an arts administrator, arts educator, volunteer for a nonprofit arts organization, or artist whose involvement in a project or program has substantially contributed to the arts in the Arrowhead Region. Anne Dugan is an independent curator and educator living on an organic farm in Wrenshall, Minnesota. She teaches art history at the College of St. Scholastica and the University of Wisconsin Superior. Dugan is the director for the Kruk Gallery on the UWS campus and the curator for the Northshore Bank of Commerce in Duluth. Dugan is the founder and co-director of the internationally recognized Free Range Film Festival, which she co-founded in 2004. For the past five years Dugan has also used her rural community spaces for artistic interventions including a root cellar concert, a popup tent with interactive projection, a walking tour of the earth’s water system, and lab space for visual experimentation. She serves as the host of “Where’s Art”, a weekly radio show on KUMD highlighting events in the local art scene and writes periodically for the Pine Knot News. Before her current positions, she served for seven years at the Duluth Art Institute (DAI) as curator and artistic director. While at the DAI, Dugan presented more than 80 contemporary visual arts exhibits, some of which went on to travel and receive recognition in national publications. In the past two years she has curated exhibitions and events at the Tweed Museum of Art and the Walker Art Center. Dugan’s academic background is in art history and new media studies, and she holds a master’s degree from Columbia University.
The Arrowhead Arts Awards had a recent addition to its list of awards in 2020. The Award for Transformational Art was created to recognize the efforts of artists to transform their communities through their work. Since this is a newer award, ARAC recognizes that there are many artists from the Arrowhead region who have left lasting impacts that extend beyond their lives. This year, the Award for Transformational Art is posthumously awarded to Karissa White Isaacs. Dr. Karissa White Isaacs, Tweed Museum of Art Curator, was a tribal member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Reservation in WI. Karissa earned her BA from Hamline University, and subsequently worked as a paralegal with the Indian Child Welfare Law Center in Minneapolis. She later joined the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office as a Legal Assistant. Karissa’s dissertation in the Department of American Studies was an assertion of tribal sovereignty. She examined the history of the legal struggle for treaty rights in the development of tribal museums in the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes. After obtaining an MA in Museum Studies from the University of Washington-Seattle and working toward the development of a new Squaxin Island Museum, Library and Research Center, she returned to her home community to build the tribe's archives. She worked on two significant oral history projects at the Minnesota Historical Society, one interviewing elderly American Indian veterans about their World War II experiences. Karissa curated significant exhibitions at the Tweed Museum. Two highlights were the much-celebrated Intersections: Contemporary Art from Minnesota-Based Native Artists and a multi-media installation by Jonathan Thunder, Manifest’o in 2018. Karissa also loved traditional art forms and curated A Selection of Gashkibidaaganag about the Ojibwe bandolier bag in 2019.
Learn more about the Arrowhead Arts Awards Here
Information about the location & date of the awards ceremony to come.
