Arts and Culture in South Dakota

South Dakota has a heritage that combines American Indian traditions, Western influences, Midwestern culture, immigrant influences, and pioneer and homesteading history. While the established visual arts and professional performing arts do not proliferate in the state, smaller, more community-oriented organizations bridge the gap in cultural life. In addition, many folk and handicraft arts thrive in South Dakota. The South Dakota Arts Council receives funding from the state legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts. The agency provides grants and programming supporting the arts in South Dakota, including a Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program that pairs established artists and craftspeople with people who want to learn a folk art form. HIGH ARTS   In Sioux Falls, the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra has presented full orchestra concerts, chamber concerts, and educational programming for over 80 years. Its ensembles include the Dakota String Quartet, the Dakota Wind Quartet, and the Augustana String Quartet. The Black Hills Symphony Orchestra, based in Rapid City, consists of over 90 musicians, presenting a season of classical concerts as well as accompanying dance concerts and Broadway musicals by theBlack Hills Dance Theater and the Black Hills Community Theater. Additional classical ensembles include Brookings Chamber Music Society, Rapid City’s Black Hills Chamber Music Society, Huron Symphony League, and Sioux Empire Brass Society. Although South Dakota has many dance schools and dance programs at the university level, few professional dance events grace its stages. The Black Hills Dance Theatre sponsors local and touring ensembles in ballet, modern, and contemporary performances. Fully staged, professional opera is a rarity in South Dakota, but small companies and schools present opera-themed concerts and special events. At Black Hills State University, the Johanna Meier Opera Theatre Institute stages concerts on campus as well as in community theaters and festivals. In Brookings, the Heartland Opera Troupe reaches young people with programming integrating opera, comedy, storytelling, and interactive theater. MUSEUMS South Dakota holds very few major museums solely dedicated to visual art. The majority of museums combine art with exhibits relevant to the state’s history, cultural heritage, natural sciences, or native tribes. One such institution, Pierre’s South Dakota Cultural Heritage Center, contains exhibits illuminating South Dakota’s diverse history. A 15,000-square foot (1,394-sq m) gallery space holds The South Dakota Experience and spans prehistory to the contemporary age. Highlights on view include a Sioux tipi, a sod house, and presentations of Lakota creation stories. In 1982, the Red Cloud Indian School opened its Heritage Center, showcasing a dynamic collection of Native American visual art and Lakota tribal art. Over 2,000 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper reflect diverse Native American tribal customs.  The Sioux Falls Arts Council and the City Parks Department restored an 1800s barn and transformed it into the Horse Barn Arts Center. The venue contains the Loft Gallery, hosting temporary exhibits of regional art. The Portfolio Gallery welcomes local artists to show their work. Also in Sioux Falls, the Eide/Dalrymple Art Gallery sits within Augustana College’s new Visual Arts Center. Professional regional artists and students showcase their artwork. The gallery has permanent holdings in ethnographic art and fine prints. In Brookings, the South Dakota Art Museum operates as a steward of professional regional art. The Native American Collection features 900 pieces spanning 1800s and 1900s tribal cultures, such as textiles, quill work, headdresses, beadwork, pipes, jewelry, rugs, carvings, clay objects, basketry, and tools. On December 23, 1890, the United States Army massacred nearly 300 Lakota Sioux people, an event that was later known as the Wounded Knee Massacre. The Wounded Knee Museum, located in Wall, chronicles the tragedy experienced by Lakota families touched by the massacre. Photographs, narratives, text, journals, and witness statements recount this historical moment. Rapid City Fine Arts Council operates programming at the Dahl Arts Center, which includes gallery exhibits of work by local, regional, and national artists. The center features a 200-foot (61-m) cyclorama mural of American history by Bernard P. Thomas (1918–1994), a realist painter of American West themes who once asserted, "Nothing gripes me more than a Western illustration done by an Eastern illustrator who doesn’t know straight up about the West." Rapid City also has the Journey Museum, a single building holding four museums: the Sioux Indian Museum, the Museum of Geology, the Archeology Research Center, and the Minnilusa Pioneer Museum. Freeman’s Heritage Hall Museum features artifacts representing 1800s Plains Indian daily life and culture as well as objects from South Dakota’s pioneer settlers and homesteaders. Other exhibits include a 1927 Lincoln-Page biplane, wildlife displays, farm machinery, rare motorcycles, historic churches, a rural schoolhouse, musical instruments, and vintage toys. Vermillion’s W.H. Over Museum highlights South Dakota’s heritage. In addition, the institution collects objects pertaining to regional natural science. Photographs recount life during the territorial days. The David and Elizabeth Clark Memorial Collection contains Sioux art and artifacts. In Gettysburg, the Dakota Sunset Museum contains the 40-ton (36-metric ton) Sioux medicine rock, which is embedded with handprints and footprints and the Lakota people consider sacred. Lakota artistDel Iron Cloud (b. 1949) painted the mural Medicine Rock Spirits on the walls around the rock. The museum installations include rooms and businesses from early pioneer days such as a barbershop, law office, parlor, kitchen, music room, sewing room, blacksmith shop, schoolhouse, and carriage barn. Historical photographs, artifacts, and documents round out the collection. The Dakota Discovery Museum, located in Mitchell, consists of a five-building complex. The Randall building holds the Middle Border Art Gallery, the Oscar Howe Art Gallery, the Case Dakota Art Gallery, and the Charles Hargens Studio and Gallery, as well as two temporary exhibit areas. Other buildings on site include the 1885 Sheldon School, the 1886 Italianate Beckwith House, the 1908 Farwell Church, and the 1914 Dimock Depot. MUSIC The South Dakota music scene owes much to Native American, immigrant, and Western cultural traditions. In Spearfish, the High Plains Heritage Center and Museum has the National Cowboy Song and Poetry Hall of Fame, dedicated to the art of extemporaneous verse, tall tales, and folk songs that rose from nights around the campfire. The organization South Dakota Friends of Traditional Music preserves and showcases traditional music by sponsoring the summertime Sioux River Folk Festival on the grounds of Newton Hills State Park. Folk and traditional concerts may encompass fiddling, blues, gospel, acoustic, bluegrass, country, old time, and Native American music and song. In the realm of popular music, the South Dakota Rock and Roll Music Association hosts an annual concert honoring inductees into its Hall of Fame. Among the South Dakota artists who have received this honor are Marlys Roe and the Talismen, Dale Gregory and the Shouters, The Fabulous Apostles, the Fabulous Trippers, and the Cavaliers. While not a lively blues scene, South Dakota has produced a few major blues artists, most notably the band Indigenous. In addition, the Sioux Falls Jazz and Blues Society presents events, concerts, andJazzFest, an annual three-day festival of major national acts as well as regional musicians. Madison’s Prairie Village organizes the Motongator Joe’s Country Music Festival. People camp on site and hear concerts by Nashville country music stars and others. Bluegrass and acoustic music are the focus at the Black Hills Bluegrass Festival, a three-day event that, as of 2010, moved to Elkview Campground. On the campus of the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, the National Music Museum and Center for Study of the History of Musical Instruments has a renowned collection of 10,000 instruments, many originating from outside Western culture. A few famous musicians originate from South Dakota, including singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin, opera tenor Jess Thomas, and accordionist Myron Floren. THEATER AND PERFORMING ARTS Rapid City serves as a cultural hub in South Dakota, featuring large-scale performance art centers as well as smaller venues. From an old-fashioned rodeo to a Volksmarch hike, interesting activities take place year round at the Crazy Horse Memorial. In addition, the memorial’s October Native American Day celebration showcases dance, art, song, and storytelling, culminating with a free buffalo stew lunch. Also in Rapid City, the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center hosts touring Broadway shows and major musical acts. The Dahl Arts Center presents art exhibits, concerts, festivals, dance shows, and theater that often reflect local culture and history. In Sioux Falls, the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Science hosts a myriad of cultural institutions and performing arts. Other area groups include the Shakespeare-oriented Bare Bodkins Theatre and musical theater ensemble Comfort Theatre. Based in Brookings, the Prairie Repertory Theatre hosts live summer musicals and comedies throughout the region. Community theaters proliferate in South Dakota, among them Rapid City’s Black Hills Community Theatre, Brandon’s The Mighty Corson Art Players, Sioux Empire Community Theatre in Sioux Falls, the Pierre Players, Madison’s Dakota Prairie Playhouse, and Yankton’s Lewis & Clark Theatre Company. FILM One of the most famous suspense scenes in film history occurs in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959) when a chase scene takes place across the precipice of the Mount Rushmoremonument. However, the filming did not take place at the South Dakota monument, but rather at a replica in Hollywood. Filmed in South Dakota, the 1990 epic Western drama Dances with Wolves has a Civil War lieutenant venturing to the American frontier where he encounters a group of Lakota Indians. Micheal Apted’s 1992 documentary Incident at Oglala features narration by Robert Redford. The film concerns the killing of two FBI agents at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975, and the ensuing legal case that found American Indian activist Leonard Peltier (b. 1944) guilty of murder. Many people, including the International Indian Treaty Council, believe Peltier was falsely accused. Other films associated with South Dakota include the Western How the West was Won (1962), action flick Mercury Rising (1998), adventure film National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007), and fictionalized biopic Wyatt Earp (1994). The adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s nonfiction work Into the Wild(2007) was partially filmed in Hot Springs, Winner, and other South Dakota locations. The old West drama Deadwood, which ran from 2004 to 2006 on HBO, centered upon South Dakota’s town of the same name. The show opens in 1870, following Deadwood’s evolution from a camp to a town. Actors who were born in or who worked for a significant amount of time in South Dakota includeJanuary Jones, Cheryl Ladd, Dorothy Provine, and rodeo stuntman Casey Tibbs. LITERARY ARTS South Dakota’s most famous writer was Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957). Through her Little Houseseries of books, she illuminated the trials, joys, and daily life of growing up in a pioneer family. In the town of De Smet, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society Historic Homes consist of three structures where the Ingalls family resided and studied. The Surveyors’ House, the family’s first home, appears in the book By the Shores of Silver Lake (1939). The First School of De Smet, attended by two Ingalls girls, shows up in Little Town on the Prairie (1941). Visitors can tour the homes and camp, ride in covered wagons, or visit an 1880s school. Every July, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Pageant illuminates a different aspect of Laura’s life. Pioneer life and early settlement also run through the work of Ole Edvart Rolvaag (1876–1931). The Norwegian immigrant settled in South Dakota and wrote novels about immigrant life and challenges. Black Elk (1863–1950) was an Oglala Medicine Man and a cousin of Crazy Horse. His narration of events around the 1876 Battle of the Little Big Horn and the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre culminated in the book Black Elk Speaks (1932). VISUAL ARTS Oscar Howe (1915–1983), from the Yanktonais Sioux tribe, worked on the faculty of the University of South Dakota’s Vermillion campus. Part of his tenure there included serving as the university’s artist-in-residence, which meant he created work specifically for the university, now part of its art collection. His work draws from Sioux painting traditions, but the painter infuses his subject matter with a Cubist perspective. One of South Dakota’s earliest non-Native American artists, George Catlin (1796–1872), traveled to South Dakota in 1832. He sketched and painted portraits of regional tribes. Another notable artist, Karl Bodmer (1809–1893), stopped in South Dakota while traveling on his Missouri River expedition. He lived with the local tribes and recorded their lives in his artwork.  Harvey Dunn (1884–1952) was born on a homestead in South Dakota. He worked as an illustrator and later as a painter.   Watertown’s Redlin Art Center pays tribute to the work of Terry Redlin (b. 1937), who paints scenes of the outdoors, nature, and wildlife. Born and raised in England, children’s book author and illustrator Paul Goble (b. 1933) moved to South Dakota as an adult. His 1977 work, The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses, earned a Caldecott Medal for the illustrations depicting Native Americans. Dick Termes (b. 1941) paints unique works he calls Termespheres. He paints images on spherical surfaces and hangs them from chains attached to motors that make the spheres rotate. Although not born in South Dakota, sculptor Gutzon Borglum (1867–1941) created one of the state’s most famous artworks. In 1927, he began drilling the face of a 5,725-foot mountain. Fourteen years later, he finished the carvings on Mount Rushmore. ARCHITECTURE In 1939, Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear wrote to sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski (1908–1982), "My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes, too." The artist began the monumental project of carving Crazy Horse Memorial, the world’s largest mountain sculpture and a tribute to American Indians. Over 50 years later, Ziolkowski’s family continues the project which, when completed, will measure 563 feet (172 m) tall and 641 feet (195 m) wide.  Watertown’s Mellette House was the home of South Dakota’s first governor. The restored Italianate 1885 Dakota Territory mansion features many furnishings from the era. The entire Wild West town of Deadwood is a historic area. Turn-of-the-century street lamps stand alongside rustic streets and illuminate the meticulously restored architecture.  In Sioux Falls, the Pettigrew Home and Museum features a peek into turn-of-the-century life in South Dakota. The lavish design includes detailed woodwork, windowpanes set with jeweled glass, silk damask wall treatments, and antique furnishings. Carthage’s Campbell Straw Bale Museum has walls made of straw covered in stucco. The rustic architecture serves as a backdrop for historic exhibits. In Vermillion, the 1882 Austin-Whittemore House is a restored Victorian residence containing antique furnishings and historical exhibits. Redfield’s Chicago and Northwestern Depot is a restored 1914 train depot with oak woodwork, marble floors, and gargoyle statues. HANDICRAFT AND FOLK ART The agrarian, Native American, pioneering, and immigrant folk arts live on in South Dakota, partially in thanks to funding by the South Dakota Arts Council. Among the state’s diverse handicrafts and folk performing arts are Midwestern fiddling, Lakota hoop dancing, German and Russian willow basket weaving, Damascus knife-making, Finnish textile arts, saddle-making,buffalo horn spoon carving, Ukrainian egg painting, and Dakota quill work. Several South Dakota sites, museums, and monuments chronicle historic and contemporary Native American culture. In Chamberlain, the AKTA Lakota Museum and Cultural Center celebrates Sioux heritage with interactive exhibits, a 36-foot diorama, and a gallery of contemporary Indian art. TheBurechel Memorial Lakota Museum in St. Francis holds artifacts representing the Lakota tribe from the Rosebud Reservation. The gift shop sells handicrafts by local artists. Sioux Falls hosts the annualNorthern Plains Indian Art Market and wacipi (powwow), organized by Sinte Gleska University. Early South Dakota life of settlers, homesteaders, pioneers, and farmers is recognized at many state sites and museums. Lake City’s Fort Sisseton has interpreters leading visitors on tours through 14 historic structures and a museum. Living history sessions enact bread baking, soldering, blacksmith work, and carpentry. At Custer’s Four Mile Old West Town, a living history town features historic figures greeting visitors, recorded messages about the area’s past, melodramas, and storytelling. The Midland Pioneer Museum recounts the area’s pioneer history with displays about their daily lives. TheDacotah Prairie Museum of Aberdeen focuses on early prairie life. A unique aspect of South Dakota folk culture inspires the exhibit at the Casey Tibbs South Dakota Rodeo Center. Interactive displays and memorabilia celebrate the state’s rodeo heritage, traditional rodeo events, and some of the superstars of the rodeo world.  HISTORIC ART MOVEMENTS South Dakota is home to many examples of crop art, also known as seed art. Practitioners affix seeds, beans, or other vegetable matter to a surface, creating a mosaic. In the town of Mitchell, the Corn Palace showcases a rococo example of the art form. People built the Corn Palace for the 1892 Corn Exposition. The folk art murals on the building’s exterior are made from multicolored ears of corn. -World Trade Press