The Arts at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities
by Cindi Beth Johnson
Cindi Beth Johnson is Director of the Program in Arts, Faith, & Culture at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. She is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and holds a D.Min. from Luther Seminary. She is currently a fellow in Intermedia Arts’ Creative Community Leadership Institute.
At United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, the arts are a foundational part of the educational experience. They are integral to teaching and spiritual formation and to models of ministry, and are a key subject of theological reflection. The arts have been present since the seminary’s earliest days.
Eugene Jaberg, a member of the founding faculty, developed United’s earliest work with the arts. He led the first interracial theatre in the Twin Cities, which included an aspiring African American actor, Lou Bellamy, who would later become the founder and artistic director of the nationally recognized Penumbra Theatre. Under Jaberg’s direction, in the summer of 1969, four years after the school opened, United’s library atrium became a theatre in the round for religious drama, and Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie and T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral played to full houses and critical acclaim from Minneapolis and St. Paul drama critics. Each performance was intentionally followed by conversations about the important religious and social issues raised in the production. Through drama and film, and later work in media, he explored theological questions regarding brokenness and redemption and the role of the human community in realizing a just society.
United’s faculty brought their own contributions. Robert Bryant initiated course work in religion and literature. In the 1980’s Mary Farrell Bednarowski offered more extensive and pivotally important work in literature and poetry, integrating these art forms into courses on theology and religious studies and, more broadly, into United’s degree programs foci on the arts. Philip Brunelle, artistic director and conductor of VocalEssence, introduced work in music with a particular focus on hymnody. Clyde Steckel taught classes in theology of music, an emerging new area of work in theology and the arts. And Marty Haugen, Madeleine Sue Martin and Art Clyde continued offerings in music and worship.
While all of these contributions were notable, the work of Wilson Yates, former president and professor emeritus, was pivotal in moving United to a national leadership role in the arts and embedding the arts into the life and reputation of United. He has been credited as a founder and pioneer in this field, one of his most significant contributions being the extensive case for the integration of the arts in theological education. In 1987, Yates published The Arts in Theological Education, a book which examined the treatment of the arts in 134 seminaries and provided the groundwork for United’s program. In 1988, with the help of a Lilly Grant, the journal ARTS: The Arts in Religious and Theological Studies was founded, with United’s Religion and the Arts Program as publisher and Yates as editor.
The seminary received other arts-focused grants during Yates’ tenure, including numerous grants from the Henry Luce and Carpenter foundations. Support from these and other funders encouraged United’s exhibition and artists-in-residence programs, a lecture series, course offerings, and workshops. On a national level, United hosted consultations on the development of theology and the arts as an interdisciplinary field, arts and congregational renewal, and the role of the arts in interfaith dialogue. From the first of these consultations came the book Arts, Theology, and the Church.
In the mid ’90s, Cindi Beth Johnson was hired as director of The Religion and the Arts Program; she gave greater structure to the program and served as the administrator for these projects. In addition to directing the program, Johnson teaches and works with students. She also introduced the Summer Institute in Spirituality and the Arts, and oversaw an expansion of the artist-in-residence program. More recently, she procured a studio space within the seminary, allowing a place for students to be about the experience of making art.
United’s commitment to the arts can be seen in other ways, as well. The Bigelow Chapel, consecrated in 2004, is itself a work of art. Joan Soranno and John Cook of HGA, working with the seminary’s Chapel Planning Committee, created a sacred space that makes a theological statement about the immanence and transcendence of God. The building provides the seminary with a sacred space while simultaneously conveying God’s presence and mystery in the world, thus transforming the seminary’s worship life. A gallery was intentionally included in the design and, in addition to accommodating worship, the chapel was created as a space for lectures, programs, and arts events, including concerts, dance, and the performing arts. The creation of the Chapel became the catalyst for a series, “Evenings at the Bigelow: Art and Soul,” established to showcase the arts as sacred expression through music, literature, the visual arts, and performance.
In 1992, United established one of the first M.A. degree programs in the country with a focus on theology and the arts. Faculty members were deeply committed to the arts both personally and professionally; indeed, a 1994 survey of United’s faculty found all were using the arts in their teaching. In 2001, Jann Cather Weaver was hired to teach in the area of worship, theology, and the arts. She gave leadership to the pioneering development of an arts concentration in the seminary’s M.Div. program; Weaver was also instrumental in the development of the arts practicum, a core class in today’s M.A. program in theology and the arts. The class, which encourages the development of one’s theological voice through an art form, invites students to weave together their work as theologians and as practicing artists.
Work with the arts is not limited to what happens at the seminary. Engagement with local institutions have included “Theology and the Arts Day” at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Minnesota Museum of American Art, along with programs at The Weisman Museum. Last year, United hosted musician Kirk Whalum for a multicultural event, “The Gospel According to Jazz,” at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church in downtown Minneapolis.
By the late ’90s, three gallery spaces were established and in use at United. Each gallery offered a different type of experience, showcasing student art, as well as exhibits by significant established artists, including Paul Granlund, Georges Rouault, and Jerome Witkin. While artwork is exhibited in the library, chapel, and administration building, the primary exhibition space, redesigned with museum quality lighting, remains the Classroom Gallery. This gallery spans the length of the seminary classroom wing, and it is also the hallway that connects Bigelow Chapel to the rest of the seminary. Moving through the corridor, students and visitors cannot avoid seeing art. Class discussions are often driven by religious questions—questions about the meaning of life and death, of God and the human condition, of the prophetic call to enact justice in the world—that the art itself, in prologue fashion, has invited students to encounter.
The galleries also sought to reflect the diversity of the Twin Cities. African American artists Rose J. Smith and Melvin R. Smith have been featured numerous times. Last year, photographer Mohammed Barre documented the life of the local Somali community with “Another Minnesota Family in the Neighborhood.” Other shows include an exhibition of Islamic calligraphy, a show of wedding contracts, and “Faith Through Asian Eyes.” These are just a few of the exhibits that have graced the gallery walls. An upcoming show, “Beneath the Surface: Exploring the Layers” by artists Chuck Hoffman and Peg Carlson-Hoffman, offers glimpses of contrast, vibrancy, and yearning for the elusive dream of peace while engaging questions of justice. This sampling shows the breadth of the dialogue that has been created not only about art but also about matters of faith through United’s exhibition program.
Last fall the galleries at United became a particular extension of the classroom when Vermont artist Deidre Scherer’s exhibition “Threads of Connection” arrived. Scherer’s art is dedicated to making the lives, needs and gifts of the elderly visible. Her subject matter is end-of-life and her medium is thread-on-fabric. Scherer draws with scissors and considers fabric her paint. She has developed this technique over twenty years, using the intricate threadwork and layers of richly colored fabric to invite a dialogue between subject and viewer that makes visible the complex, nonverbal issues related to the end of life. Combining the techniques of layering, piecing, and machine sewing, Scherer builds a rich, tactile surface of images that have contours, highlights, and shadows. Her unique approach to the fabric medium serves to tell the story as a narrative and gives the figures a three-dimensional quality. Each work depicts a visually compelling moment, while raising universal questions surrounding the processes of aging, dying, and grieving. Scherer notes, “My work provokes a dialogue that is essential to our times and our lives.” Scherer’s work filled two of the seminary’s gallery spaces. “The Last Year,” a series of 10 works, portrays the final year in the life of an elderly woman. With immense compassion and respect, Scherer chronicles the woman’s journey toward death, from the onset of her decline, through brief reprieves of renewed strength, and finally, to acceptance and release. Each day, the gallery provided a visual representation of loss for students as they walked to class. The second show, “Surrounded by Family and Friends,” was placed in the gallery in Bigelow Chapel. A series of life-sized works depicted six distinct death scenes which include intergenerational and non-traditional families from culturally diverse groups, “Surrounded by Family and Friends” promotes a discussion about dying as natural within the context of community and relationship.
Cindi Beth Johnson is Director of the Program in Arts, Faith, & Culture at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. She is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and holds a D.Min. from Luther Seminary. She is currently a fellow in Intermedia Arts’ Creative Community Leadership Institute.
At United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, the arts are a foundational part of the educational experience. They are integral to teaching and spiritual formation and to models of ministry, and are a key subject of theological reflection. The arts have been present since the seminary’s earliest days.
Eugene Jaberg, a member of the founding faculty, developed United’s earliest work with the arts. He led the first interracial theatre in the Twin Cities, which included an aspiring African American actor, Lou Bellamy, who would later become the founder and artistic director of the nationally recognized Penumbra Theatre. Under Jaberg’s direction, in the summer of 1969, four years after the school opened, United’s library atrium became a theatre in the round for religious drama, and Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie and T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral played to full houses and critical acclaim from Minneapolis and St. Paul drama critics. Each performance was intentionally followed by conversations about the important religious and social issues raised in the production. Through drama and film, and later work in media, he explored theological questions regarding brokenness and redemption and the role of the human community in realizing a just society.
United’s faculty brought their own contributions. Robert Bryant initiated course work in religion and literature. In the 1980’s Mary Farrell Bednarowski offered more extensive and pivotally important work in literature and poetry, integrating these art forms into courses on theology and religious studies and, more broadly, into United’s degree programs foci on the arts. Philip Brunelle, artistic director and conductor of VocalEssence, introduced work in music with a particular focus on hymnody. Clyde Steckel taught classes in theology of music, an emerging new area of work in theology and the arts. And Marty Haugen, Madeleine Sue Martin and Art Clyde continued offerings in music and worship.
While all of these contributions were notable, the work of Wilson Yates, former president and professor emeritus, was pivotal in moving United to a national leadership role in the arts and embedding the arts into the life and reputation of United. He has been credited as a founder and pioneer in this field, one of his most significant contributions being the extensive case for the integration of the arts in theological education. In 1987, Yates published The Arts in Theological Education, a book which examined the treatment of the arts in 134 seminaries and provided the groundwork for United’s program. In 1988, with the help of a Lilly Grant, the journal ARTS: The Arts in Religious and Theological Studies was founded, with United’s Religion and the Arts Program as publisher and Yates as editor.
The seminary received other arts-focused grants during Yates’ tenure, including numerous grants from the Henry Luce and Carpenter foundations. Support from these and other funders encouraged United’s exhibition and artists-in-residence programs, a lecture series, course offerings, and workshops. On a national level, United hosted consultations on the development of theology and the arts as an interdisciplinary field, arts and congregational renewal, and the role of the arts in interfaith dialogue. From the first of these consultations came the book Arts, Theology, and the Church.
In the mid ’90s, Cindi Beth Johnson was hired as director of The Religion and the Arts Program; she gave greater structure to the program and served as the administrator for these projects. In addition to directing the program, Johnson teaches and works with students. She also introduced the Summer Institute in Spirituality and the Arts, and oversaw an expansion of the artist-in-residence program. More recently, she procured a studio space within the seminary, allowing a place for students to be about the experience of making art.
United’s commitment to the arts can be seen in other ways, as well. The Bigelow Chapel, consecrated in 2004, is itself a work of art. Joan Soranno and John Cook of HGA, working with the seminary’s Chapel Planning Committee, created a sacred space that makes a theological statement about the immanence and transcendence of God. The building provides the seminary with a sacred space while simultaneously conveying God’s presence and mystery in the world, thus transforming the seminary’s worship life. A gallery was intentionally included in the design and, in addition to accommodating worship, the chapel was created as a space for lectures, programs, and arts events, including concerts, dance, and the performing arts. The creation of the Chapel became the catalyst for a series, “Evenings at the Bigelow: Art and Soul,” established to showcase the arts as sacred expression through music, literature, the visual arts, and performance.
In 1992, United established one of the first M.A. degree programs in the country with a focus on theology and the arts. Faculty members were deeply committed to the arts both personally and professionally; indeed, a 1994 survey of United’s faculty found all were using the arts in their teaching. In 2001, Jann Cather Weaver was hired to teach in the area of worship, theology, and the arts. She gave leadership to the pioneering development of an arts concentration in the seminary’s M.Div. program; Weaver was also instrumental in the development of the arts practicum, a core class in today’s M.A. program in theology and the arts. The class, which encourages the development of one’s theological voice through an art form, invites students to weave together their work as theologians and as practicing artists.
Work with the arts is not limited to what happens at the seminary. Engagement with local institutions have included “Theology and the Arts Day” at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Minnesota Museum of American Art, along with programs at The Weisman Museum. Last year, United hosted musician Kirk Whalum for a multicultural event, “The Gospel According to Jazz,” at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church in downtown Minneapolis.
By the late ’90s, three gallery spaces were established and in use at United. Each gallery offered a different type of experience, showcasing student art, as well as exhibits by significant established artists, including Paul Granlund, Georges Rouault, and Jerome Witkin. While artwork is exhibited in the library, chapel, and administration building, the primary exhibition space, redesigned with museum quality lighting, remains the Classroom Gallery. This gallery spans the length of the seminary classroom wing, and it is also the hallway that connects Bigelow Chapel to the rest of the seminary. Moving through the corridor, students and visitors cannot avoid seeing art. Class discussions are often driven by religious questions—questions about the meaning of life and death, of God and the human condition, of the prophetic call to enact justice in the world—that the art itself, in prologue fashion, has invited students to encounter.
The galleries also sought to reflect the diversity of the Twin Cities. African American artists Rose J. Smith and Melvin R. Smith have been featured numerous times. Last year, photographer Mohammed Barre documented the life of the local Somali community with “Another Minnesota Family in the Neighborhood.” Other shows include an exhibition of Islamic calligraphy, a show of wedding contracts, and “Faith Through Asian Eyes.” These are just a few of the exhibits that have graced the gallery walls. An upcoming show, “Beneath the Surface: Exploring the Layers” by artists Chuck Hoffman and Peg Carlson-Hoffman, offers glimpses of contrast, vibrancy, and yearning for the elusive dream of peace while engaging questions of justice. This sampling shows the breadth of the dialogue that has been created not only about art but also about matters of faith through United’s exhibition program.
Last fall the galleries at United became a particular extension of the classroom when Vermont artist Deidre Scherer’s exhibition “Threads of Connection” arrived. Scherer’s art is dedicated to making the lives, needs and gifts of the elderly visible. Her subject matter is end-of-life and her medium is thread-on-fabric. Scherer draws with scissors and considers fabric her paint. She has developed this technique over twenty years, using the intricate threadwork and layers of richly colored fabric to invite a dialogue between subject and viewer that makes visible the complex, nonverbal issues related to the end of life. Combining the techniques of layering, piecing, and machine sewing, Scherer builds a rich, tactile surface of images that have contours, highlights, and shadows. Her unique approach to the fabric medium serves to tell the story as a narrative and gives the figures a three-dimensional quality. Each work depicts a visually compelling moment, while raising universal questions surrounding the processes of aging, dying, and grieving. Scherer notes, “My work provokes a dialogue that is essential to our times and our lives.” Scherer’s work filled two of the seminary’s gallery spaces. “The Last Year,” a series of 10 works, portrays the final year in the life of an elderly woman. With immense compassion and respect, Scherer chronicles the woman’s journey toward death, from the onset of her decline, through brief reprieves of renewed strength, and finally, to acceptance and release. Each day, the gallery provided a visual representation of loss for students as they walked to class. The second show, “Surrounded by Family and Friends,” was placed in the gallery in Bigelow Chapel. A series of life-sized works depicted six distinct death scenes which include intergenerational and non-traditional families from culturally diverse groups, “Surrounded by Family and Friends” promotes a discussion about dying as natural within the context of community and relationship.
Deidre Scherer, Open Window, 49″ x 37″, thread on fabric, © 2000.
Scherer also participated in an artist’s residency at United, deepening the engagement with her artwork. During her residency, she visited two seminary classes, “Pastoral Care in Grief and Loss” and “Bearing Witness: The Power of Story.” Students studying pastoral care were invited, as individuals and then as a group, to let their visual experience prompt them to reflect on how they would hope to provide care, or be cared for, at the end of life. The second class, “Bearing Witness,” taught by United’s visiting professor in theatre and culture Sarah Bellamy, invited students to sculpt a one-word response to Scherer’s work with their bodies. Working in small groups, the students selected movements that embodied the poignant stories they were depicting. Some were brought to tears as they reflected on the ways they were experiencing the stories in their bodies.
Deidre Scherer, In Her Room, 36″ x 30″, thread on fabric, © 2001.
Today the state of the arts at United is vital. Under the leadership of President Barbara A. Holmes, the arts will continue to influence and shape the form of theological education at our seminary. The institutional commitment to the arts includes an awareness of the arts as integral to interfaith conversations: artists representing the diverse populations of the Twin Cities are being engaged; partnerships and programs with the Guthrie and Penumbra theatres provide new opportunities for the communities we serve; and newly appointed Sarah Bellamy brings a distinct lens to her teaching with a focus on working for justice. Past is prologue as Sarah, daughter of Lou Bellamy from United’s early Religious Drama program in the 60’s and 70’s, connects the exciting future with the past.