New faces on old art

City-owned Gag prints restored

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- Some new faces on some old Wanda Gag prints saw light on Tuesday night.

After decades in storage drawers and time in a Minneapolis conservation shop, the latest batch of woodcuts, charcoal drawings and watercolors by this city's most famous artist were opened for inspection by city officials and restoration committee members.

For years, 59 of Wanda Gag's works sat in a drawer in the New Ulm Public Library until they were acquired by the city in 1997. The first efforts at restoration began in 2000.

The prints were never shown publicly before Tuesday night, when the officials and committee members came to the Brown County Historical Society's museum annex to see the newly-preserved works close-up. The entire set of prints will be displayed publicly after the project's remaining phases are complete, said committee member George Glotzbach, who privately owns several of Gag's works.

Greater interest in those works is what brought about the showing. Gag, who is also known for achievements in children's literature, is a local entity who received national recognition, said Historical Society curator Pam Krzmarzick.

"And she was ahead of her time not just from a woman's perspective or an arts perspective but from a human perspective also," she said. "She's got a great story."

The collection, which is owned by the city but kept in the Historical Society's archives, puts New Ulm in elite company with renown museums that also own pieces of Gag's art. They include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the British Museum in London and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, among many others.

Many of the pieces on display represented some of Gag's more common prints. The city's collection also includes a few that could be considered rare or one-of-a-kind, Glotzbach said, because it includes s a sandpaper drawing, a sandpaper watercolor painting and Wanda Gag's self-portrait. Each print in the city's collection is valued at $1,000.

The prints were originally collected by the New Ulm chapter of the American Association of University Women during the 1930s and were donated to the New Ulm Public Library in 1941, where they stayed until the city acquired them in 1997.

Restoration was based on which prints needed the most work. The first 16 prints were restored and preserved in 2001 after the committee secured a grant from the Prairie Lakes Regional Arts Council and matching funds from the city. Fifteen more works were finished in 2003. Krzmarzick estimated the restoration has cost in between $20,000 to $25,000.

Experts at a Minneapolis conservation shop cleaned the art works using a combination of different methods. The prints will be stored in special files until ready for public display.

With most -- if not all -- of the works restored, the committee is seeking ways to make the prints fit for travel or display in an art show and working on reproductions of the 59 prints for use in art classes. A booklet that shows each print in the collection is also in the making and could be sold to raise funds, according to committee member Darla Gebhard.