The Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota always offers a wide variety of free and noteworthy exhibits. Two especially interesting exhibits are currently on display, exploring the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Holocaust experience of Viennese citizens, respectively.
 

In the Spirit of Martin: The Living Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Through April 6.
 

In the Spirit of Martin is the first major exhibition of visual arts dedicated to the celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. The exhibit features 115 paintings, photographs, prints, sculptures and mixed media pieces by a variety of artists who all take different approaches to representing King and his ideas.

The exhibit unfolds in a relatively chronological order, beginning with artist responses to King's bus boycott in Montgomery to his tragic death in 1968. The works not only chronicle King's life, but also his varied effects upon public opinion.

Phoebe Beasley's Don't Say What Simon Says (2000) remembers Dr. Martin Luther King's nonviolent resistance strategies. Two abstract figures, one white and one black, sit with folded hands above text that reads, "Simon says put your hands TOGETHER. Simon said no fair fighting side by side for the same side. Simon says come side to side TO DIE."

Michael Zeldis' piece, Peaceable Kingdom (1999), shows an almost cartoon-like rendering of people of all races and religion standing arm and arm and listening to music in a flowering garden. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Lincoln are the two tallest figures, hovering above the happy and friendly crowd. Not all is well, however, as a tiny devilish looking creature crouches behind a tree. Zeldis' work, completed long after King's death, shows the lasting effects of King's life work by representing this idealistic world. Today, people of all races and religions can come together as friends.

Lev T. Mills' work, Out-Loud Silent (1969), responds to the death of King. The piece shows a depressing collage-like rendering of images associated with King. A faded photo of King opens his mouth to a scribbled mixture of his "I Have a Dream" speech. An innocent child looks at the observer with a frightened and solitary gaze. The photo is muted, bleak, and depressing—evoking the sentiments that arose in response to King's murder.

The exhibit includes a number of other impressive works representing King's life. Works by Gordon Parks and Andy Warhol are included, along with many lesser-known and folk artists.

Through the juxtaposition of historical accounts in Dr. King's life with visual renderings of those events, In the Spirit of Martin articulates the power of art to shape collective national memory. In the Spirit of Martin is a powerful exhibit and a moving celebration of Dr. King's life.
 

Almost Home: The Return of Holocaust Survivors and Resisters to Postwar Vienna

Through May 4
 

Before Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the Austrian capital, Vienna had one of the most ancient and productive Jewish communities on the entire European continent. A mix of newly arrived Eastern European Jews donning caftans and beards, and well integrated Jews who identified themselves as Austrian instead of as Jews made the Viennese Jewish community as cosmopolitan as the entire city itself. But in a mere seven years, this community of well over 100,000 people was nearly completely decimated.

Although a fairly small exhibit, Almost Home explores a variety of experiences of Austrian Holocaust survivors who chose, after 1945, to return permanently to their native city of Vienna.

The exhibit chronicles eight survivors by presenting portraits and narratives accompanied by memorial books—resembling reconstructed photo albums. Each individual had vastly different experiences during and after the war in Vienna. Several were Jewish and had either hidden or been sent to concentration camps. One woman had worked in the resistance, and helped hide three people in her apartment building.

After the war, some were happy to return to their native city, while others saw it as a city that still harbored much anti-Semitic sentiment. One man even felt that everyone was anti-Semitic everywhere in the world (except Israel).

In addition, the exhibition includes a rare home movie, from the Israeli photographer Gilad Ophir, which documents his mother's Viennese family at their Vienna Woods' summer home in 1937.

Almost Home is an exhibition project by photographer Nancy Ann Coyne. In 1987, in response to the absence of information in archives and museums concerning the legacy of Viennese Jews, Coyne initiated a case study project integrating contemporary photography with survivors' oral histories and salvaged family photographs. In total, Coyne interviewed 38 Viennese survivors who fled, were deported or imprisoned, lived underground, resisted or rescued Jews.

The exhibit is far from agitprop; it is simply the recorded memories of these eight returnees.

Almost Home presents an interesting glimpse at the individual memories of returnees', exploring issues of identity in relationship to personal memory, family albums and histories.
 

Regular hours 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Tuesday through Friday (till 8:00 p.m. Thursday); 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
 

Weisman Art Museum. 333 E River Rd (University of Minnesota), Mpls. 612-625-9494