With a focus on mixed-race families, Twin Cities artist Leslie Barlow imagines a new reality
The Minneapolis artist's latest works show her vision of family.
July 1, 2021 — 3:55pm
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Twin Cities artist Leslie Barlow remembers wandering the hallways of the Minneapolis Institute of Art as a child and discovering the 1856 painting "Peace Concluded" by Sir John Everett Millais. The family portrait shows a white, British family gathered in a cozy living room setting while the father, a wounded war veteran, reads a newspaper announcing the end of the Crimean War.
The portrait would stick in her mind. It was the first she had ever seen, but the family in it looked nothing like hers.