Breakfast Club

Additional Information

Program: Breakfast Club
Date: Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Time: 9 a.m.
Cost: Free, members; $7, nonmembers.
Location: Stearns History Museum, 235-33rd Ave. S., St. Cloud.
URL: stearns-museum.org/breakfast-club
Cokato Director Discusses Photo Collection at Stearns History Museum
Immigrant Photographer Captured City’s History with Candid Shots
ST. CLOUD (February 26, 2018) – Johanna Ellison, director of the Cokato Museum and Akerlund Studio, will talk about the Gust Akerlund glass-plate photography collection at 9 a.m. Wednesday, March 13, at Stearns History Museum’s Breakfast Club.

Akerlund, a Swedish immigrant, was a studio photographer from 1902 to 1954 in Cokato who captured the way people lived in the first half of the 20th Century. It didn’t matter your social status or ethnicity; his goal was to record the community as it was and its visitors on film. His studio is on the National Registry of Historic Places.
Ellison, who did her college thesis on the studio, became the Cokato Museum’s director in December 2018 after seven years as its assistant director. She received her master’s degree from St. Cloud State University. Although Akerlund’s collection and studio provide a window into Cokato’s past, it also challenges the preconceived notion of what a small Minnesota town was like in the early 1900s.

The Breakfast Club program is free for Stearns History Museum members and is $7 for nonmembers. Refreshments are served. The Museum is located at 235 South 33rd Avenue in St. Cloud. Please join us for this exciting story of ingenuity and perception.