St. Paul Winter Carnival

St. Paul Winter Carnival
Exhibition by Kristina Johnson
Located within the Otto Bremer Room at the George Latimer Central Library in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota.
January 29th to February 6th, 2022
Link to exhibition text and gallery map

Celebrated for over 135 years, the St. Paul Winter Carnival is one of our nation’s oldest and greatest seasonal traditions. Special events sponsored by major local businesses began in the late 1880s as a way to reinvigorate the spirit of the North during its most desolate months. For the artist Kristina Johnson, the Carnival is a way to connect to her family and their strongly rooted ties to Minnesota’s history. Johnson is the great, great, great granddaughter of Jacob Schmidt, founder of the Schmidt Brewery; and the great granddaughter of Edward G. Bremer, a St. Paul banker who was kidnapped by the infamous Barker-Karpis gang in 1934. This exhibition is a unique display of Johnson’s artwork interwoven with heirloom treasures from her family’s archive, highlighting the multiple generations of relatives who all grew up enjoying the Winter Carnival.

Kristina Johnson is an artist and curator currently living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She runs Waiting Room, an arts platform that directly supports the cultivation of art and culture within the Twin Cities. Johnson has curated exhibitions exploring critical questions about the relationship of art to abstraction, the environment, social concerns, political issues and theories of identity, individuation, and subjectivation. Her curatorial work has been featured in Artforum’s “Critics’ Picks”; as well as personally featured in local Twin Cities publications such as City Pages, MNDaily, and Star Tribune.

The Saint Paul Winter Carnival is produced by the Saint Paul Festival and Heritage Foundation and is funded by private donations and corporate contributions. The Board of Directors, supported by hundreds of corporate and individual members, employs a full time staff to help plan this community celebration.