From Poland to Brooklyn to St. Paul, posters on display soon at Vandalia Tower have not been seen since the ‘80s

Jared Kaufman, Pioneer Press
·5 min read

One day in the late 1980s, a woman showed up to the art gallery that Brian and Teresa McMahon ran on the main floor of their Brooklyn rowhouse.

Throughout the ’80s, the McMahons’ home gallery had become something of an art hub among the sizable Polish community in the Greenpoint neighborhood; Teresa herself had grown up in Poland. The couple didn’t know the visitor, but she had a question: Would they be interested in taking her collection of Polish posters?

An upcoming exhibition at Vandalia Tower in St. Paul, curated by the McMahons — who now live in Stillwater — may be the first time a selection of these posters have been displayed since they were created in the 1980s.

The McMahons took on the collection at the time, but they didn’t know what they’d agreed to: The posters were packed tightly in airtight archival storage tubes, and the woman who’d amassed them had no idea how many she had or what they said.

The couple always intended to open the tubes — after all, they schlepped them from New York to the Twin Cities when they moved in 1990 — but the project always seemed to end up on the back burner.

Late last year, though, they finally began the delicate process of unrolling the posters, which had become quite brittle with age. Turns out, the collection contained more than 400 posters advertising movies and plays, social causes and cultural events, and many of them were able to be preserved in fairly good condition.

For the St. Paul show, the McMahons curated a selection of about 25 posters from the collection that display a cross-section of a specific ’80s Polish graphic design aesthetic: Boldly colorful, a little surrealist, subversively symbolic to try to skirt Soviet-era censorship.

The show, “Clifford Place Collection” — named after the McMahons’ street in Greenpoint — runs June 1-30 in suite 234, a second-floor gallery space at Vandalia Tower. An opening reception, open to the public, will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. Saturday, June 1.

The gallery is open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Entrance is free, and more information is at cliffordplacecollection.com.

Greenpoint to the Twin Cities

Like Brian and Teresa McMahons’ relationship with the posters, their lives and journey to the Twin Cities have been defined by chance encounters and spontaneous choices.

While studying architecture at the renowned Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Brian focused particularly on restoring and converting old loft-style buildings. The Greenpoint neighborhood, full of cheap warehouses, was the perfect testing ground, he said. So he drove up there and strolled into a local deli, which he discovered was run by a kind 20-something Polish woman.

He asked who owned a nearby building, tracked him down, bought the property, and set about fixing it up — stopping by the deli all the while.

“I was coming in, covered in plaster dust, trying to chitchat in between her customers coming and going,” Brian said.

The deli owner, however, had a policy.

“I said, ‘I do not date customers,’” Teresa said. “Was I right about that? Not in the end!”

Within about six months, Brian and Teresa were married.

Teresa herself was born in Ulanow, a small town in southern Poland. When she was a child, her aunt and uncle moved to the U.S., and after she graduated high school, they invited her for a visit.

She got off the airplane at John F. Kennedy International Airport in 1974 — and didn’t return home. She applied for permanent residency and eventually citizenship and, meanwhile, made enough money to buy the small deli.

In the early 1980s, not long after they married, the McMahons bought a burned-out rowhouse at 16 Clifford Place and set about converting it into a showcase of their architectural and artistic goals. The couple lived on the second floor, with balconies overlooking a 30-foot main floor atrium-slash-gallery where they entertained guests and installed art shows.

The family became close with noted artists including Andrzej Czeczot, Jan Sawka and Wiktor Sadowski. They branched out from solely Polish creators and attracted high-profile guests; during an exhibition of works by the sculptor and human rights activist Shulamith Koenig, renowned designer Isamu Noguchi stopped by.

But by the late ’80s, life in New York had become tougher, Brian said. Real estate prices were crashing and, now parents of young children, the couple was becoming concerned about rising crime rates and drug use, he said.

Teresa ran into the Polish-speaking artist Ursula von Rydingsvard while Brian was working on a building near the artist’s Manhattan home. The Walker Art Center had recently commissioned her to create an installation for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, von Rydingsvard was saying, and she was quite taken with the Twin Cities.

(That work, “Three Bowls,” now belongs to the sculpture park at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.)

Brian flew to Minneapolis to scope it out.

“He called me and said, ‘We’re moving,’” Teresa said. “I said, ‘Fine! Let’s go!’”

Now, decades later, the McMahons are proudly displaying their poster collection in their adopted state. Posters are essentially street art, Brian said, and he fell in love with how the “funky” industrial character of Vandalia Tower matches the rawness of the graphic design.

“I just love the exposed trusses,” he said. “The space is as much a part of the exhibit as the posters are. These are two things that correspond with each other.”

If you go

What: An exhibition of Soviet-era Polish cultural and social posters

When: Gallery is open daytime hours Fridays/Saturdays/Sundays from June 1–30; a public opening reception will be held 4–8 p.m. June 1

Where: Vandalia Tower, suite 234; 550 Vandalia St.

Of note: Some posters in the show were designed by noted Polish artists including Andrzej Czeczot, Jan Sawka and Wiktor Sadowski

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