Kick off the first weekend of 2025 at CLUES gallery in St. Paul, where visitors can reflect on 2024 and offer blessings for the new year at a Puerto Rican-inspired altar.
At the Minnesota History Center, explore an exhibit highlighting women’s roles in social movements, featuring artifacts spanning the education, civil rights and suffrage movements. Experience traditional and contemporary Ethiopian music at Berlin in Minneapolis, and see the Guthrie Theater’s play about two Asian immigrant women navigating Thanksgiving in 1970s America.
Puerto Rican-inspried exhibit invites reflection and blessings for 2025
“2024, in many ways, especially with the election, has been a hard year for people,” said Puerto Rican artist Candida Gonzalez. “How do we move into 2025 with hope?”
Gonazlez invites visitors to explore this question through two interactive installations in her latest exhibit, “Salud, Paz & Comunidad” (Health, Peace & Community) at CLUES gallery in St. Paul.
The first, “Nuestros Bonitos Recuerdos” (Our Beautiful Memories), offers a nostalgic look at the year through photo collages and prints featuring CLUES staff and collaborators. The images are displayed on embroidery hoops and repurposed chains, hanging like ornaments on the wall.
The second installation, “Bendiciónes” (Blessings), is an altar inspired by a Puerto Rican tradition of seeking blessings from elders. Gonzalez describes it as a space to honor one’s emotions and higher beings or deities without religious constraints. The altar, adorned with photographs of Puerto Rico and candles representing love, money, peace, health and justice, invites visitors to write and offer their own blessings for the new year.
“What were the beautiful moments of 2024?” Gonzalez asks. “What were the hard moments? What is the one moment that you really want to add to this collective celebration as we say goodbye to 2024 and move into 2025?”
Date: Now through February 14, 2025. Public reception on January 30 from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Time: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Location: 797 E. 7th St., St. Paul
Cost: Free
For more information: Visit clues.org/latino-art-events.
Artifacts and stories highlight women’s history
The Minnesota History Center’s exhibit, “Girlhood (It’s complicated),” offers a timely exploration of the role women have played in shaping and disrupting systems of education, work, wellness, fashion and politics.
The exhibit features more than 100 artifacts — toys, protest signs, menstrual products, advertisements, personal diaries — highlighting women’s roles in social movements such as suffrage, civil rights and environmentalism.
Minnesota is the fourth and last stop to host the traveling exhibit from the Smithsonian, and adds a unique focus on girls’ basketball in the state. This section celebrates Minnesota’s first female basketball player, Linda Roberts, alongside other players who designed a uniform that helped stop their hijabs from slipping off.
Date: Now through June 1.
Time: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursdays.
Location: 345 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul
Cost: Free
For more information: Visit mnhs.org/historycenter
A night of Ethiopian music
Berlin, a European-inspired jazz club, will host a night of traditional and contemporary Ethiopian music. Drummer and composer Abinnet Berhanu leads the band, Ahndenet, and will be joined by vocalist Genet Abate in performing Ethiopian folk and popular songs, drawing inspiration from East and West African diasporas.
Date: Saturday, January 4.
Time: 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Location: Berlin, 204 N. 1st St., Minneapolis
Cost: $21
For more information: Visit berlinmpls.com.
Two women redefine Thanksgiving far from home
Playwright Lloyd Suh’s one-act play, “The Heart Sellers,” is being performed at the Guthrie Theater, offering a glimpse into a Thanksgiving dinner shared by two Asian immigrant women in 1973.
Luna (Jenna Agbayani), from the Philippines, and Jane (Juyeon Song), from Korea, navigate their first American holiday together, just eight years after President Lyndon Johnson signed The Hart-Celler Act, or the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. The act abolished discriminatory quotas, like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The quotas limited how many people could enter the United States from Asia, Africa and southern and eastern Europe.
Luna and Jane bond over a bottle of wine and prepare a turkey dinner as their husbands work the night shift in a medical residency program. Through the women’s shared stories and their challenges adjusting to a new country, the play captures the isolated resilience of immigrant women redefining their sense of home.
“Each by each these people, they dig into their chest, and they take out their heart, and they pass it over,” Luna says in the play. “This heart seller — it’s not somebody who’s going to give you a heart, but we’re the heart sellers. It’s us. It’s our hearts, and we sell them away.”
The Guthrie Theater will host a BIPOC Community Night at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, January 10, providing a networking space for Black, Indigenous and people of color. Additionally, an Asian Artists Pop-Up Market will take place on Saturday, January 18 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Date: Now through January 25.
Time: 1 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Location: Guthrie Theater, 818 S. 2nd St., Minneapolis
Cost: Tickets start at $33
For more information: Visit guthrietheater.org.
