St. Olaf College

Arnold Flaten '22

Contemporary
United States
1900 - 1976

View objects by this artist.

Arnold Wangensten Flaten was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1900. Arnold grew up in Northfield, where his father, Nils Flaten, was head of the Romance languages department at St. Olaf College. After graduation from Northfield High School in 1918, he attended St. Olaf College where the posters he created for sporting events caught the campus’s eye (Lee). He would go on to attend Luther Seminary in St. Paul, and would not pursue art professionally until 1929, when he was asked by President Boe of St. Olaf College to head the art department.
Flaten, who had no formal artistic training, then attended the Minneapolis Institute of Art. He followed this by travelling abroad to Europe, where he honed his skills for two years before returning to St. Olaf in 1932 to begin work on the “art barn” and the rest of the department, for which St. Olaf received a $5,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York (Lee). Flaten specialized in woodcarving, and grew especially fond of the direct cutting technique, though he was known to work with various mediums of sculpture and carving during his career (Flaten).
During his time at St. Olaf, Flaten continued to create artwork, especially within area churches. In 1965, he received an honorary doctor of fine arts degree from Concordia College, was honored by the Lutheran Brotherhood during the dedication of a walnut wood screen he had carved for the society’s home office. When Crown Prince Harald of Norway visited St. Olaf in October, one of Flaten’s sculptures, “The Watcher,” was given to him as a gift (Lee).
Flaten retired as chairman of the art department in 1968, which led to a great spike in his artistic output (Flaten). Two shows were held of his works in 1970, one at St. Olaf’s Flaten Art Museum and another at Central Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. By 1971, the Flaten Art Museum was able to exhibit fifty new works done by Arnold since his retirement. He would go on to be a guest sculptor at California Lutheran College in 1971 and ‘72, and then serve as resident artist and lecturer at Triune College Humanities Forum in 1973 and ‘74. In 1976, Arnold Flaten died in Rochester, Minnesota, and a reception was held for him at the Flaten Art Museum, featuring his somewhat lesser known watercolor works. St. Olaf College honored his legacy in 2013 by dedicating the Flaten Art Barn to Arnold for all his work with the art department (Lee).

Madison Duran '20
March 2019

Sources:
Flaten, Arnold. Arnold Flaten, Sculptor. Augsburg Pub. House, 1974.

Lee, Maggie. “Flaten begins art career after preparing for ministry.” Northfield News [Northfield]
10 September 2010: Print.