Timeline: The long, twisty journey of the Minnesota Museum of American Art

1894: St. Paul School of Fine Arts opens. Membership costs $3, the equivalent of around $85 today.

1909: The school becomes part of the St. Paul Institute, a forerunner to the Science Museum of Minnesota.

1927: Formally incorporated as a museum, it begins collecting art for instructional purposes. A gallery opens the following year at 23 E. 6th St.

1932: Amid the Great Depression, the school leaves downtown and moves to St. Paul's Cathedral Hill.

1939: Renamed the St. Paul Gallery and School of Art, it takes over a brownstone mansion at 476 Summit Av. During this heyday period, it presents major exhibitions with Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

1964: What's now known as the St. Paul Art Center returns to downtown as part of the new St. Paul Arts and Science Center at 30 E. 10th St.

1969: Yet another name change, as the Minnesota Museum of Art settles its collection in the Jemne Building, a limestone Art Deco gem overlooking the river. Nearby Landmark Center is home to the school and occasional traveling exhibitions.

1992: After a failed fundraising campaign to build a new center, it announces plans to trim staff and change its name to the Minnesota Museum of American Art, to better reflect "the unfolding value of the American multicultural experience." It drops educational offerings and sells the Jemne Building — along with most of its non-American art — and moves into Landmark Center.

2004: Galleries shift to a leased space in a former auto garage at the old West Publishing headquarters on Kellogg Boulevard, a more visible location that initially helps attendance. Behind the scenes, however, its financial position is deteriorating.

2009: With its space slated for demolition and the museum on the brink of bankruptcy, the board dismisses remaining staff, puts the collection in storage and hires Kristin Makholm, gallery director at Minne­apolis College of Art and Design, to reinvent the museum. With no gallery space, she draws from the collection to stage exhibitions around the state.

2012: The museum finally finds a new home with the opening of a "Project Space" in the historic Pioneer-Endicott buildings at 4th and Robert streets, where Makholm stages regular shows, including a Minnesota Biennial in 2014.

2017: Construction begins on a $12.5 million project to expand the museum's public space to more than 16,000 square feet, including 6,000 for galleries, by the end of 2018. A second phase, costing $10.5 million, will add 12,000 square feet — almost all of it for galleries — by 2020.