Last Tuesday, March 30, the Warrior Entertainment Network hosted an event at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum (MMAM). The museum gala encouraged formal clothing and offered a scavenger hunt bingo card for students to win small prizes.
Daphne Jebens and Matt Straubmuller, both fourth-year students, attended the event as a date night. It was their third visit to the museum. Both commented that they enjoyed the celebrity photo exhibit, Titanic exhibit and various different landscape paintings. Jebens spoke to the importance of the event in promoting MMAM.
“I would say, honestly most people don’t know this [MMAM] exists outside of Winona,” Jebens said. “There are very important paintings here that I think everyone should see at least once.”
Straubmuller stressed the value of art and made a distinction between photography and painting.
“Art, like paintings and photographs end up being a lot more emotionally provocative. In my mind, the photograph can capture reality really well, but a painting can capture your experience of living,” Straubmuller said. “I think it is great that there are both modern and historical works here [MMAM] so you can kind of see how people viewed the world in different eras of history.”
Another participant, Joseph Lassegard, is a first-year student visiting MMAM for the first time last Tuesday during the gala. Lassegard commented that he was surprised at how much of a good time he had.
“My friends and I were kind of making up stories for each one [painting], and then you actually stare at it. It makes you actually look at it and appreciate it more than just walking past it, so it’s been fun,” Lassegard said.
Lassegard commented that he had been meaning to go to the art museum for a while, but the art gala event finally gave him a good ‘excuse’ to leave his room and experience something new.
“People should go to this museum [MMAM]. I honestly probably would not have gone on my own, and I thought it was actually interesting,” Lassegard said. “I think it is good for the Warrior Entertainment Network to put on events like this. I think they do a good job, they do a lot of planning, and they put a lot of work into it. It’s nice they do events.”
Second-year student Julia Ferguson is the events director for the Warrior Entertainment Network. Part of her job is to plan and coordinate certain events such as the MMAM gala. Ferguson commented that the goal of the Warrior Entertainment Network club is to provide fun and inclusive events to improve campus life and student relationships at Winona State University.
“As an entire club, our goal is to obviously reach as many students as possible, make campus an active place for all students to be at and make it very inclusive for everyone so everybody on or off campus has a chance to have fun activities like these,” Ferguson said.
Ferguson also stressed the importance of involving local businesses with Warrior Entertainment Network events.
“We [Winona State students] are such a huge population of Winona and not a lot of students know all what Winona has to offer, so by having activities like this it allows us to help their business as well,” Ferguson said. “So not only are we promoting students to go out and have fun in the community, but they are also discovering new places they may have not gone
to before.”
Ferguson mentioned how the Warrior Entertainment Network club is looking for more members to do bigger and better events. Ferguson will be the Executive Director for the Warrior Entertainment Network in the fall, so any students that are interested in joining the club may email her at [email protected].