Brookings, SD -- Ice Cream and Art Museum

Yesterday, on the advice of Mary and Joan, I went to the Dairy Micro for ice cream. "Dairy Micro," I found out, stands for the "Dairy-Microbiology" building at the Agriculture Department of the South Dakota State University, which houses a very popular ice cream bar (and apparently a cheese shop, which I didn't visit). Although the campus was dead in August, the ice cream shop was crowded, mainly with families with young children. I didn't want to set a bad example for the kids, so I limited myself to one large dish of ice cream, enough to sample the vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry flavors. All were good....certainly the best ice cream I have had on this trip.

I noticed that the ice cream bar was close to the Art Museum, so I stopped in there and was certainly glad that I did! This was s real pleasure. The highlight, for me, was the work of Harvey Dunn (check www.bpib.com/illust/dunn.htm), a local artist who painted in the early 1900's. They were running a big exhibit of his work titled "Feminine Images," featuring women of the plains. Great stuff. I always tend to favor realism, and these works were realism with a strong emotional punch. (Unfortunately, I am not able to locate many of these paintings on the Internet; the link that I provided above is focused mainly on his illustrations and WWI drawings.)

Reading Harvey Dunn's biography on the Internet, I was surprised to find out that (a) he attended the Chicago Art Institute (Robin M. -- did they mention him when you were there 100 years later?), and (b) he taught at the Art Students League of New York (and was renowned as a teacher); and (c) he taught at the Grand Central School of Art, at the top of Grand Central Terminal (I never knew that there had been an art school at the GCT!).

There was a lot of other good stuff at the museum, and I particularly liked an exhibit by Fatih Benzer.

A bit of trivia that I thought was interesting: When I was eating ice cream I was talking with a local bus driver. He asked me if I had come through Manchester, SD, and I said I didn't remember seeing that town. He asked me if I had seen a roadside historical marker pointing out the area that Harvey Dunn had grown up in, and I told him "yes, I remembered reading that marker, but I did't remember there being any town there." He then explained that the marker was in what was left of the small town of Manchester, which was obliterated by a 2003 tornado! (You can check it out on Wikipedia.org, if you are interested.)