Transcripts

[MUSIC PLAYING] OLGA VISO: Introducing this week's Art Hounds.

TIM NOLAN: We're three recruits from the Minnesota arts community.

SUSAN: On the trail of exciting local arts. You probably have seen some version of Pinocchio at some point in time or you've read the story about Pinocchio, but a new production that's happening at the Jon Hassler Theater in Plainview, Minnesota is really unique because it's a new take on that. My name is Susan [? Hirsch ?] [? Mugele, ?] and I'm a puppeteer from Minneapolis.

The cast and the performers in Pinocchio are using some of my favorite elements. They're really using puppets in the show. They're using clowning and physical theater. The staging is really minimal, but then has interesting changes and switches, and you get to watch the performers on stage becoming the characters, which are really multifaceted. It's very much a family-oriented show. Although, Pinocchio is a naughty little boy that does a lot of things that he's not supposed to do.

I actually did go and see the show this past weekend, and there were lots of kids in the audience, especially a lot of little boys. And afterwards, they were all about taking photos with the actors and staying around and talking about the show. And so it's good for all ages, but I think little boys might also especially like it.

OLGA VISO: One of the things I'm really excited about this week is that the Weisman Museum, which is one of the great jewels of museums around the world right here in the Twin Cities, opens its new expansion on Sunday, October 2nd. Olga Viso, Executive Director at the Walker Art Center. I think the Weisman Art Museum is an architectural landmark that we're really, really lucky to have. It's the first art museum that Frank Gehry ever designed, and it precedes the Guggenheim. So we have that little jewel that was the nugget that then created a whole litany of museums around the world.

The expansion, what it's bringing is more gallery space, so 8,000 square feet more of gallery space, and a lab supported by Target that is for creative collaboration. And I think the museum, which has always looked to the river, is now looking to the campus. The strengths of the Weisman's collection is American modernism, and they also have a wonderful ceramics collection. And they'll have an opportunity to showcase much more of their collection. It's really an inviting completion of a vision that was started 20 years ago.

TIM NOLAN: I think the poet Seamus Heaney is perhaps the greatest living poet in the English language today. My name is Tim Nolan, and I'm a lawyer and poet in Minneapolis. Seamus Heaney will be visiting Minnesota this week for two special events. He's going to be at the College of Saint Benedict on Sunday, October 2nd. And then on Monday, October 3rd, he's going to be in conversation with Joe Dowling at the Guthrie at 7:30.

He's from Northern Ireland. He was born in 1939. He's the Nobel Prize winner, 1994. I once met Seamus Heaney in New York when he bummed a cigarette off me at a party. He asked me not to tell his wife that he was getting a cigarette from me. He's a very accessible person. He has the Irish gift of gab. He's very warm. He has a wonderful voice. He's got a charming manner.

And so his poems all contain stories, many of them about his childhood. And the details are rich, the sounds are rich. The place names are full of music and meaning. Well, here's an example. I mean, just listen to these words. The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge through living roots awaken in my head.

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