Looking for a cool place to get out of the heat that beats loitering around a big box store, The Wife and I ended up taking a guest to the Minnesota History Museum. We have a family history pass so we weren’t worried about admission except for our guest, which we gladly found out it’s FREE after 5:00pm on Tuesdays.

A lot of the exhibits were the same as the last time we had visited such as the Weather Exhibit, Minnesota’s Greatest Generation, and Open House. The new exhibits this time were 1934: A New Deal for Artists and The US-Dakota War of 1862 which I am going to touch on here.

The New Deal for Artists mostly consisted of American paintings which where turned out in around 1934 as public works. It was somewhat interesting, but I would have like to find out more of why they were made or why they picked the paintings that they did. Interesting to see but would definitely rather see something like the Minneapolis Institute of Art for paintings with more explanation and variety.

I found the exhibit setup on the US-Dakota War of 1862 to not really contain many physical things to look at other than a two antique guns and a few old pieces of paper with most of the information contained on poster boards. I really like when they do have exhibits like this that relate to the broader Minnesota in general and I can say I had been to a battle site or heard about it before. I do wonder whether anyone outside of Minnesota has heard of this particular war though, but there isn’t an easy way to find this out or is there?