ALFRED F. PILLSBURY
Alfred Fiske Pillsbury was born into a prominent Minneapolis family in 1876. His family built their fortune on milling flour. His father, John S. Pillsbury (1827-1901), co-founded the milling company that bears the family name in 1872; served as the eighth Governor of Minnesota from 1876 to 1882; and is largely considered to be the founder of the University of Minnesota. Alfred was the youngest of four children and the only son of John and Mahala Fisk Pillsbury.
He attended high school in Minneapolis and then entered the University of Minnesota graduating from the College of Law in 1894.
The University of Minnesota
Alfred is remembered as one of the first great Minnesota Football players. He was literally the owner of the team’s only football his freshman year. He played for eight University of Minnesota Gophers football teams from 1886-1893. As long as a student was working toward a degree, he was eligible to compete on a university’s athletic teams. So young Pillsbury — “Pilly” to fans and sportswriters — went from undergraduate courses to law school. He played for eight years, six as the team’s QB and captain of the team for two years.
History of Minnesota Football, published in 1928 by the General Alumni Association of the University of Minnesota, claims that Pilly’s football playing days ended in 1892. John Hayden writes in a chapter titled “The Early Days”: “For long and creditable performance no one has surpassed Alf. Pillsbury. He played good football on the first team, in 1886, and on successive teams until 1892, when he completed his law course.”
But it seems Pilly had one game left in him. The Minneapolis Tribune’s account of the Gophers’ 40-0 thrashing of the Wisconsin Badgers — the biggest game of the year — on November 11, 1893, describes several Pillsbury plays as a halfback that day. He scored two touchdowns. A drawing that illustrates the story shows Pilly carrying the ball. It was apparently his only appearance during the 1893 season. Though he wasn’t on the team’s roster for the year, he does appear in the 1893 team photo. Perhaps the greatest tribute to Pilly as a player was offered by the famous University of Chicago coach Amos Alonzo Stagg. Writing in the University of Minnesota Alumni Weekly football special in 1914, Stagg recalled the first contact he ever had with a Minnesota team when he refereed a Gophers game in 1891. Pillsbury was one of four players he remembered from that game more than 20 years earlier, noting that Pilly was a “stalwart” at his position and “made a great reputation.”
Alfred is credited with playing a pivotal role in creating a new stadium for the Gopher football teams. Until 1896 — Pilly’s entire playing career — the Gophers usually played football on the baseball field behind the West Hotel in downtown Minneapolis. The biggest drawback was that the baseball field wasn’t quite long enough for a regulation football field, which lead Northwestern University to protest their loss on the shortened field in 1892.
In 1896 the team moved to a new field, a sandy burr patch next to the Armory on the University campus. His father John Pillsbury privately purchased six lots adjacent to the Armory football field and convinced the city to vacate Arlington and Union Streets through the campus at that point. His intention was to give the lots he had purchased to the university to expand the football stadium, but these plans were not completed before he died in 1901. Alfred completed the plan, however, deeding the land to the University.
The University then augmented the gift with the purchase of additional land and paid for the construction of a new grandstand that would seat 10,000 and provide standing room for nearly 10,000 more spectators. Pilly then stepped up again with the money to construct a brick wall around the entire athletic complex, which also included a running track and a baseball field. After several years of intense public pressure, Northrop Field was replaced after only 21 years by Memorial Stadium, which opened in 1924. Alfred Pillsbury was reported to have donated $50,000 toward the construction of that stadium.
After graduation, he began full-time work alongside his father at the Pillsbury Flour Milling Company in 1896.
In 1899 Afred married Eleanor Field who was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of Massachusetts Supreme Court Chief Justice Walbridge Abner Field and Eliza Ellen McLoon Field.
When John S. Pillsbury died in 1901, Alfred devoted his full time to administering his father’s estate and then became active in building a stately mansion along with lead architect, Ernest Kennedy.
In 1908 a leasing company, Pillsbury Flour Mills, was organized by Alfred F. Pillsbury along with his second cousins Charles S. Pillsbury and John S. Pillsbury who bought the Pillsbury-Washburn Flour Mills out of receivership. The three were active in the new Pillsbury management and Alfred was elected secretary and treasurer. He held both positions until he resigned as secretary in 1921, continuing to serve as treasurer until 1940.
Alfred was always interested in innovation. He owned the first high-wheeled bicycle and one of the first three cars in Minneapolis, which he entered in the hill-climbing contests of that time.
According to local historians, Alfred was never excited about the family flour-milling business, however, he devoted a lifetime to guiding the policy of the company while supporting civic, cultural, and welfare activities in Minneapolis.
Alfred Pillsbury was certainly industrious and served as the president of the St. Anthony Falls Water Power Company, a director of the Twin City Rapid Transit Company for 22 years, president of the Union Terminal Elevator Company, a director and executive committee member of the First National Bank and Trust Co. for 48 years, director of First Bank Stock Corporation for 21 years, Vice president for 18 years and trustee for 47years for the Farmers' and Mechanics' Savings Bank of Minneapolis and Director of Northwestern Life Insurance Company for 26 years.
To many, Alfred was best known as an enthusiastic promoter of civic welfare, recreation, and the arts. Alfred was a member of the Minneapolis Club, Minikhada Club, the Lafayette Club, and was a member of the board of directors of the Aero Club of Minneapolis in 1918. He served as the president of the Park Board and was a board member for 15 years. While pleading the case for greater spending on park recreation programs, even in the depth of the Depression, Pillsbury wrote that providing recreation was, “just as vital as any function of government, not excluding that of the apprehension and conviction of criminals and the education of our youth.”
He also served as a trustee of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra and in various capacities with the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, the predecessor of Mia, including serving as president for 13 years.
His interest in the arts, however, went beyond being a mere patron. Alfred took a prolonged trip to Japan in 1919, where he was captivated by the beauty of the things he saw there. After his trip, he and his wife devoted themselves to collecting. With a particular fondness for ancient Asian art, he amassed a huge collection of Chinese bronzes, jade, and porcelain during his lifetime.
Alfred acquired his first Chinese bronze in 1929. At the time, an increasing number of bronzes were coming onto the international art market, as Chinese dealers noted foreigners’ taste for bronzes with fine decoration. The Alfred F. Pillsbury collection of Chinese bronzes was regarded as the best in the Western world and his jade collection ranked second. He was internationally known as an authority on the two subjects.
By 1927, Pillsbury became a public company and was first traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The Pillsbury "A" Mill, where Pillsbury’s Best bread flour was milled and various animal feeds were made became the oldest operating flour mill in Minneapolis.
In the final years of his life, he turned over his responsibilities but retained his membership on the board of directors. In 1940, Time magazine reported that Alfred Fiske Pillsbury resigned as treasurer of the Pillsbury Company, leaving the Pillsbury family without an officer in the company until Philip Winston Pillsbury, son of Charles S. Pillsbury, assumed the Pillsbury Company treasurer's position.
In 1942, Alfred recognized a protégé and recruited Bruce Dayton, at the age of 24, to be the youngest member of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts board of trustees, serving for 73 years until his death. Bruce and his wife Ruth would continue to transform the MIA into one of the foremost collections of Chinese furniture, scholarly objects, and other works of art in America.
Alfred Pillsbury became the museum’s most important patron in the first half of the 20th century. By the time Alfred died in 1950, he had amassed an estate of $6 million. Alfred’s bequest to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in 1950 included over nine hundred Asian objects including his outstanding collection of 150 Chinese bronzes, 176 archaic jade, and porcelain valued at over $1,000,000, becoming the most valuable private collection ever given to the Institute. It still forms the nucleus of the Minneapolis Institute of Art's ancient Chinese, Islamic pottery, and Chinese Qing period porcelain collections.
The Alfred F. Pillsbury Bronzes
The Minneapolis Institute of Art possesses one of the great collections of archaic Chinese bronzes in the United States. While additions have been made in recent years, the core of the collection was bequeathed to the museum in 1950 by Alfred Fiske Pillsbury. Ranging in date from the Shang (c. 1600–1046) through the Han (206 –220) dynasties, the collection was the result of a relationship between Pillsbury and international art dealer C. T. Loo (1880–1957), who, in the 1930s and 40s, located excellent examples of nearly every vessel type.
The growth of the collection was chronicled in a series of loans to the museum during that time. As the market began to cool, and Pillsbury’s health began to decline, he hired Swedish sinologist Bernhard Karlgren, then director of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm, to write a scholarly catalogue of the collection.
Unfortunately, Pillsbury passed away just months before Karlgren’s book was published.
‘Eternal Offerings’ at MIA
While MIA opened a gallery devoted specifically to the archaic Chinese bronzes in 1998, very little scholarly work on the bronzes had been conducted since Karlgren’s publication in 1950.
Thus, when Liu Yang, scholar of Chinese art history and archaeology and already familiar with collection joined Mia’s staff at Mia in 2011, a ‘bronze project’ became a frequent topic of conversation. In 2015, grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, the Blakemore Foundation, and the Bei Shan Tang Foundation launched the project. At the same time, MIA invited Chinese artisans Wang Xiaozhong and Hu Zhihua for residences in April 2015, during which they produced hundreds of ink rubbings and line drawings of the bronzes.
MIA created a touring exhibition ‘Eternal Offerings: Chinese Bronzes from the Minneapolis Institute of Art’, which garnered considerable interest from venues across the States. Ultimately it was shown at the Ringling Museum of Art and the Asia Society Texas Center.
For its own exhibition, MIA invited renowned art director and film designer Tim Yip to design the show. Best known for his work on the 2000 film by Ang Lee, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon — for which he won an Academy Award for best art direction — Yip has created sets and costume designs for many celebrated directors.
‘Eternal Offerings’ demonstrates Mia’s abiding commitment to innovation and experimentation. Perhaps unsurprisingly given his background in film and theatre, Yip’s approach emphasizes experience over pedagogy. The installation, filling seven galleries and over 1,000 square meters, is devoid of didactic panels and labels. Instead, the installation is meant to be a series of evocations to transport visitors into abstract environments intended to conjure the contexts in which the bronzes were originally used and the mindset of the Chinese who produced them.
Through cinematic projections, pictorial wall murals, and atmospheric gallery lighting, visitors are meant to feel the mystery of the forest and the creatures that inhabit it; to understand, for example, the stylized animals and zoomorphic patterns embellishing the surfaces of ancient bronzes. Other installations emphasize the ritual use of bronze objects within the context of a formal religious setting or burial altar. And one room focuses on the role of bronzes in expressing the concept of li, or propriety through ritual and sacrifice.
March 4, 2023 - May 21, 2023
