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Just walking through the Minneapolis Institute of Art galleries with Patrick Noon is an education. He seems to know the history behind each painting and the life of the artist who created it. He leads the way to a landscape in one gallery and beams as if greeting an old friend.

"It's magical," he said. "The atmospheric perspective in this is extraordinary."

French artist Claude Lorrain painted "Pastoral Landscape" in 1638. But Noon calls it “the Claude.” It was the first picture he bought for the Mia.

"And it turns out to be one of the most important old masters that we have acquired in many decades," he said. "And it was also — and will probably remain for some time — the most expensive picture we have ever acquired."

The institute doesn't reveal what it spends on individual pictures, but it's unlikely to have been cheap. Noon said Lorrain was a pivotal figure in the 17th century art world.

"He was just recognized as one of the premier landscape painters in the history of the art," he said. "And what's magnificent about this picture is — it's in a perfect state of preservation, which most Claudes aren't. They are usually a wreck."

Noon credits that to it being in a private collection in Ireland for over 300 years until the 1960s, when a British collector bought it. 

It just so happened that the collector wanted to sell just as Noon got his job in Minneapolis in 1997. Noon visited a dealer in London to see if there was something he might be able to add to the institute’s collection just as the Lorrain picture arrived. Noon knew he had to leap.

"Sometimes you just cannot account for happenstance," he said. "You just have to be prepared to expect that at some point, you will find something so incredible and unexpected you just have to go for it."

It took a year to convince the museum trustees, but the Claude came to Minneapolis.

"And I told Evan Mauer, the director at that point, ‘If I never acquire another picture for this institution, I will be quite happy,’" Noon said.

He did though — a couple of hundred of them. He also organized major shows, using his connections to borrow works from institutions around the world.

Noon said while the impressionists have more fans, he's argued the case for the older works.

"Trying to explain the history of art to people and the importance of old master paintings and pictures like this, it's not hard, " he said. "It's just you have to be prepared for a lack of attention."

Noon's most recent purchase is Nicolas de Largillière’s 1701 "Portrait of Charles-Léonor Aubry, Marquis de Castelnau." It's a huge, glorious image of a nobleman in his garden.

"And it didn't cost anything because nobody's buying these portraits of dead white guys with wigs. It's just not fashionable," he said.

But Noon wanted it because the Mia already had its pair: the portrait of the Marquis' wife, bought in the 1970s.

Someone separated the pictures in the middle of the 19th century and removed the ornately carved gilded frame.

Noon said the new frame was a disaster. After a Parisian artisan hand carved an exact copy of the other picture's frame, the two portraits were, as Noon puts it, “re-married.”

Noon said the museum business is emerging from a rough patch, following years of aging audiences and donors and lessening interest from young people. It used to be 400,000 visitors through the door was a banner year, but new programming has changed that.

"Now we’re up in the 700,000 figure, so that's a good sign. Whatever we are doing, we are doing right," he said.

While he's retiring, Noon said he has at least one show he still wants to do and various other projects. He said he'll miss walking through the galleries every day, but he'll still come visit the art. After all, he points out, admission is free.

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After leading the Minneapolis Institute of Art's paintings department for 22 years, Patrick Noon retires Friday. He has guided the department through two building expansions and acquired some 200 paintings for the museum’s collection.

After a life in pictures, Mia painting curator Patrick Noon retires

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