Since the dawn of homo sapiens there have
been 100,000,000,000 human beings born. Of that only 6,500,000,000
are alive today. Out of that living mass rise individuals who engage
our world and make a difference to the civilization that has clothed
our species and given rise to what we call culture. Barbara Kaerwer
is one such individual. She has been both a teacher and a patron of
art. To thousands of people she has taught art history,
covering everything from cave art to the art of our times. She has spent
a lifetime collecting the works of artists whose lives were part of
the fabric of the 20th Century - a century of extremes - both in
terms of advances in wealth and technology, but also in terms
of destruction and inhumanity. This is readily evident in the art she has collected
and preserved for posterity.
This page is in memory of Barbara Mackey Kaerwer. She
passed away on March 13, 2016 at the age of 94. I credit Barbara with
giving me a love of art, ideas and life. She was always open to new
ideas. One final debt I owe her is that by having me in Student Volunteers
in the summer of 1970 I met my future wife, Candice Frisk. We have been
married almost forty years and have enjoyed a wonderful life
together.
Dane Sorensen
April 4, 2016
Barbara at MIA Summer of
1971
Chance has allowed me to meet and know this lovely
art historian from the University of Wisconsin. The Midwest is an
unusual spot on the globe of the world. It has not known war or felt
the wrath of destruction as much of the world did during the 20th
Century. It is a place where people have worked, built towns and
cities, homes and schools, museums and parks, and lived out their
lives at best they can. Life and death are in balance and that is as
it should be. In the Midwest, millions of people live their lives as
if they were the center of the universe and believe in a personal god
that has and will protect them from the brutal things they see on the
news of extreme places that are not part of the Midwest.
While art can survive and continue to be created
in times of destruction, it is far better served in times of peace.
It is in the peace of the Midwest that Barbara has been able to
create a home that is a museum of her intellectual interests. Her
home is not easy to take in. Every square foot could be the subject
for an interesting paper. One really could spend weeks enjoying the
art that peppers her domicile. And even if all the prints, paintings
and sculptures were removed, the house itself is an object d' art.
The Kaerwer house reminds me of many of the grand old houses in
England. Many are the product of countless additions and changes.
Barbara's house is like that. It was not all built in one go, but has
grown as she and Howard have grown during their adventure together.
The spaces within her walls are intense and make a wonderful
environment for creative living.
To Barbara I owe a lot. This sentiment is shared
by hundreds of others who have been blessed with the chance to learn
from her. On the surface she is an art historian. However, it is by
art that she bestows meaning to life. Art is the mirror by which man
defines himself. As our species sojourns through time it has changed
and adapted as it has built an ever more complex world. The answers
that pleased the Pharaohs and defined their life does not work today.
The answers that were frozen in stone in the cathedrals of Europe do
not work today. The answers of life keeps evolving. Barbara shows how
art can define our lives just as it has defined the cultures of the
past. Although we do not pray to the gods of the Nile, or Athens, or
Rome, we still can learn about the past and about ourselves. It is
the eternal questions that lives in all humans who have a spark of
creativity that Barbara shares via the objects that were borne from
artists of all ages.
To many young minds she was the first to offer the
tools, and the inspiration to dream beyond the ordinary. She inspired
many to rise above the mundane interests of the masses. From her
inspiration has come several generations of patrons for the arts.
This also includes artists and teachers as well as others who have
kept that spark of humanity and have always sought to create
something definitive. I do not think Barbara has a clue of the full
impact of her work. It is beyond anyone's ability to fully show the
impact she has made in this world. Some of her lessons of inspiration
have been passed on by others to people she will never know and they
will never realize the debt they owe this lovely lady from Eden
Prairie.
Interesting name - Eden Prairie. Fitting, in many
respects of this lady of the arts. Her home and property would make a
wonderful Garden of Eden. From creature comforts to food for the
brain, it is all there. As did Eve of olde, Barbara has offered the
fruit of knowledge to mankind. Her library would rival Jefferson's
and from it has come many talks and lectures to inspire. An hour in
her home is worth a lifetime of watching the History Channel. It is
intense and I wish her well in her efforts to shape it into an
educational tool for her community.
To use a religious term, I feel blessed to have
known Barbara. She offered a sanctuary at the art institute when I
was young. She showed me there were other kindred spirits and brought
us together in a fellowship of art and ideas. From Student Volunteers
I met my future wife - who has shaped my life for the better.
Although we can never know the future, we can continue to try and
enjoy the cultural pearls that we come by. I feel blessed that from
the knowledge Barbara gave to Candy and I, and that we have been able
to enjoy exploring the world of ideas as we live our lives as
entrepreneurs and parents. And I know that many former MIA Student
Volunteers feel the same. Thanks, Barbara, and keep up the good work.
You are one in 100,000,000,000 and the world is better for
that.
Love,
Dane Charles Sorensen
Over the last few years I have worked on tracking down a few alumni whom I
remember as being exceptional people. I have emailed them news of this wonderful
lunch in Eden and asked them to share any thoughts they have on Barbara. Each of
them has vivid memories of that summer at MIA.
Dr. Elizabeth Lott wrote on August 21, 2006
I do have a vivid memory about Barbara I can
share. As I remember it, each of the MIA volunteers had to do a
personal project of some kind. I think most did a project centered on
the then-current exhibit on Art Deco. Barbara asked me, however, to
do some research on a few leaves from a book of hours. I believe the
experience was one of my first brushes with medieval manuscripts.
Three years later, in college, I took a class from the chair of
chemical engineering, whose personal passion was Latin paleography.
That did it; I was hooked. After completing my undergraduate degree
in classical Latin and Greek, I went on to my Ph.D. in medieval
Latin, where I specialized in textual transmission. And that (as the
poet wrote) has made all the difference. I am still grateful for the
seminal role Barbara played in my ultimate choice of career. So maybe
she really is Barbara Career!
[dcs note: The last reference to Barbara "Career" was due to my
carelessness in emailing Liz. I was in such a hurry I flew through
the Spellcheck and ended up agreeing to correcting Kaerwer for
Career. An error I immediately saw and emailed Liz to apologize on
such a silly typo.]
Cheers,
Liz
A Tribute to Barbara Kaerwer
During our lives we encounter many people. As
social creatures, we are affected by all of these people, especially
our family, friends, and colleagues.
If we are lucky, we encounter a person who changes
our life in fundamental and lasting ways. If we are truly blessed one
of these people will rise to the level of being an “Epiphany
Person”.
An “Epiphany Person” is someone who guides us to a
profound understanding of life itself. Barbara shaped many lives,
including my own, by opening our eyes to the world of art in all its
manifestations. It was an epochal moment, as uplifting and all
encompassing as the light entering the cave described in Plato’s
“Republic”:
At first, when any of them is liberated and
compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and
look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will
distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in
his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one
saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now,
when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards
more real existence, he has a clearer vision,
Barbara enlightened us all through the Student
Volunteers Program. Through her we gained understanding of art, the
artists, and how they shaped our world. We gained a full appreciation
of why art must be part of our lives and how art completed us.
Each of us, in our own way, applied these lessons
throughout our lives. Our lives are richer and more complete for it.
Most importantly, we all strived to support and add to the world of
art. In my case, I collected numerous works of art, mostly from
Africa, and donated many pieces to museums around the world. I have
served on museum boards and organized arts festivals. Art defines my
life, my home, and my career. I can trace it all back to those
amazing weeks, during the summer of 1970, when Barbara brought light
into the cave.
Scot M. Faulkner
Student Volunteer Program 1970
By R. Louis Bofferding
Barbara was an extraordinary woman — extraordinarily intelligent,
principled, industrious, curious, and optimistic to the very end, if our last
conversation in November was any indication. Then, she refused to dwell on the
diminishments of age, preferring to discuss our mutual interests, just as we had
over the course of the previous decades, as I went from high school to college,
and then to graduate school, eventually becoming a curator, and then a dealer,
and sometime writer and speaker on the decorative arts. She had sent me off on
this trajectory back in 1970 when I was a fourteen-year-old Student Volunteer,
and, as it would turn out, a protégé for life. A vivid
presence, I can still picture Barbara as she was then, clad in one of her
signature Op Art dresses, blond hair pulled back in a chignon, eyes made up like
a pharaoh’s, sweeping into a darkened classroom illuminated by a single beam of
light cast from the slide projector — an apt analogy for a woman who cast her
own strong light as she spoke engagingly, eloquently, and passionately about
art.
April 2016
" - sweeping into a darkened classroom
illuminated by a single beam of light." Photograph by Dane
Sorensen
Lunch with Barbara at
MIA
Summer of
2006
Barbara and R. Louis
Bofferding
Wandering through Eden
Summer of
2006
Lunch in Eden
Candy Sorensen - Student Volunteer
Alumni
Kitty Kitty the Fifth
Stephen Henning - Student Volunteer
Alumni
Looking at Stephen's artwork
Howard at college and Student
Volunteers from 1971 online
Below is a video I made of one of Barbara's lectures
from 1971,
Text & Photos by Dane Sorensen - Student Volunteer
Alumni
Obituary from Minneapolis Star
Barbara (Mackey)
Kaerwer
Kaerwer, Barbara Mackey Art
historian, lecturer and collector, passed away March 13 after a recent bout with
cancer. She was 94 years old. Barbara was preceded in death by her husband,
Howard E. "Bud" Kaerwer, in 1993, and her sister, Katherine Mackey Dalgety, in
2007. She and Bud were married for more than 50 years and shared passions for
traveling, gardening, reading, boxer dogs and calico cats. Survivors include
sister-in-law Elizabeth Mason, nieces Kathy Miehls, Julie Beja, Lisa Ganfield,
Lynn Shay, and several great nieces and nephews. Barbara was born in 1921 in
Beloit, Wis., and grew up there. She attended the University of Wisconsin, and
received a bachelor's degree in English literature and political science. After
earning a degree in labor relations at Marquette University, she held positions
in the industrial relations departments of Allis Chalmers Manufacturing Company
and 3M Company. An extended stay in Europe in 1953 motivated her to study the
cultural forces that shaped Europe and the resultant generation of artistic
styles. She was enrolled in the doctoral program of the Art History Department
of the University of Minnesota for the next four years. From 1956 to 1971, she
served on the education staff of The Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA). Barbara
began as a publicity secretary and editorial assistant. Self-described as having
"boundless energy," she quickly rose to become co-chair of the education
department and senior lecturer. In the mid-1960s, she started the member's tour
program, which offered art and architecture trips to destinations in the United
States, Europe and much of Asia. She created and directed the Student Volunteer
Program, a summer course for high school students, which combined art history
lectures with volunteer work at the museum. Barbara remembered her students, and
they often remembered her and the program with great fondness. Additionally, she
and her husband donated numerous works of art to the MIA, and Barbara served on
museum's Print and Drawing Council board of directors for 24 years. In 1971, she
became a freelance art historian and lectured at venues throughout the Twin
Cities, including University of Minnesota Continuing Education, Minnetonka
Center of Arts, Woman's Club of Minneapolis, and the American Association of
University Women. Her classes frequently filled, and she was described as
dedicated, intelligent, filled with dash and savvy, enthusiastic, articulate and
knowledgeable. Barbara was a loyal and generous alumna of the University of
Wisconsin. She served on the Council of the university's Elvehjem (later renamed
Chazen) Museum of Art from 1984 to her death. Works from her vast collection of
German Expressionist prints, and fine and decorative works products by the
Vienna Secession and Wiener Werkstätte in Austria were shown in four exhibitions
between 1972 and 2003. She donated nearly 400 pieces of decorative and fine art
to the Chazen, which will strengthen its collection and function as a teaching
tool. In addition, Barbara contributed 1,000 books, exhibition catalogs and
other printed materials to the university's Kohler Art Library. Barbara and Bud,
a turf agronomist, took an active interest in the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.
She was the first president of the Friends of the Andersen Horticultural
Library. Barbara was an active volunteer and donated to the Arboretum's art
collection, library and research of ground cover plants. The Kaerwers built a
home in Eden Prairie in 1949 and lived there for decades. In 2012, Barbara
donated the house and surrounding acreage to the Nine Mile Creek Watershed
District. The house has been extensively remodeled and now serves as the
district headquarters and education center. Memorials are suggested to the
Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin, the Minnesota Landscape
Arboretum, and The Minneapolis Institute of Art. A private memorial service will
be held.
Published on
April 2, 2016
This Web Page was originally created August 20, 2006 (ten years before her death) to honor Barbara.
By Dane C. Sorensen