Community Engagement and Concept Sketch for Outdoor Spaces at Minnesota Marine Art Museum
With Chris Cornelius
Friday, August 11 | 3pm - 4:30pm
No registration required, come and go as you please.
The Minnesota Marine Art Museum is poised to pursue some ambitious plans to rethink its six-acre campus plan over the next three to five years. “Through a community design session hosted last summer [led by artists Ian Hanesworth and Marlena Myles with support from the National Endowment For The Arts and Arts Midwest] we realized the Museum could be connecting more of our visitors to the water, meet a demand from our residents and visitors alike to have less-formal, but equally inspiring spaces that reflect our mission and make MMAM more aligned with the vision the City of Winona has put forward in it’s Arts and Culture Strategic Plan,” says Scott Pollock, MMAM Executive Director.
Over the winter and into spring, MMAM worked with HGA to identify some key improvements to the six-acre site to meet the needs of our next generation of visitors, improve operations, and create an integrated and more inclusive ‘water-inspired’ campus experience. A Comprehensive Plan was drafted, shared at MMAMs Annual Report To The Community (May 15) and now ready to be put into action.
With support from the Statewide Health Improvement Partnership program, a Minnesota Department of Health effort to support community-driven solutions to expand opportunities for active living, healthy eating, and commercial tobacco-free living, MMAM is ready to begin designing two components of the plan.
If you could imagine an inclusive, interactive outdoor space that promotes active living on the Minnesota Marine Art Museum’s riverside campus, what would you expect to see? What might exceed your expectations?
Come as you are, and share your ideas with Chris Cornelius, citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and Professor and Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of New Mexico. He is the founding principal of studio:indigenous, a design practice that specializes in designing environments with more communal and flexible spaces, and how to use materials that are more appropriate to a local climate or culture.
“I want to think critically about what [is] being built, what stories [are] being told, and how people [will] experience it,” Chris Cornelius, was quoted in a recent New York Times, “How An Indigenous Architect Came Out Of His Shell, March 9 2023.
Meet architect Chris Cornelius and share your thoughts about ways the Minnesota Marine Art Museum can use its outdoor spaces to be more inviting for everyone in our community, create a space that promotes a healthy lifestyle, and connects us more to the plants and animals all around us.
Chris T. Cornelius (Oneida)
Chris Cornelius is a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and Professor and Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of New Mexico. He is the founding principal of studio:indigenous, a design practice serving Indigenous clients.
He served as a cultural consultant and design collaborator with Antoine Predock on the Indian Community School of Milwaukee (ICS). ICS won the AIA Design Excellence award from the Committee on Architecture for Education. Cornelius holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Virginia and a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Cornelius was the Spring 2021, Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor at Yale University. He has previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Virginia.
Chris is the recipient of numerous awards and honors. Including the inaugural Miller Prize from Exhibit Columbus, a 2018 and 2022 Architect’s Newspaper Best of Design Award, and an Artist residency from the National Museum of the American Indian. Chris has been exhibited widely including the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Studio:indigenous received a 2021 Architect’s Newspaper Best Of Practice Award – Best Small Practice, Midwest.
Chris lives and works on the ancestral lands of the Pueblo, Tiwa and Piro people.
This project is supported in part by the Statewide Health Improvement Partnership grant, a Minnesota Department of Health effort to support community-driven solutions to expand opportunities for active living, healthy eating, and commercial tobacco-free living.