Walker Art Center

The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, together with the adjacent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and the Cowles Conservatory, it has an annual attendance of around 700,000 visitors. The museum's permanent collection includes over 13,000 modern and contemporary art pieces including books, costumes, drawings, media works, paintings, photography, prints, and sculpture.

The Walker Art Center began 1879 as a personal art gallery in the home of lumber baron Thomas Barlow Walker. Walker formally established his collection as the Walker Art Gallery in 1927. With the support of the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration, the Walker Art Gallery became the Walker Art Center in January 1940.

Programs

Visual Arts

The Visual Arts program has been a part of the Walker Art Center since its founding. The program includes an ongoing cycle of exhibitions in the galleries as well as a permanent collection of acquired, donated, and commissioned works. Since the 1960s, the Visual Arts program has commissioned works from artists to exhibit and held residencies for artists including Robert Irwin, Glenn Ligon, Barry McGee, Catherine Opie, Lorna Simpson, and Nari Ward.

The Walker’s collection represents works of modern and contemporary art, especially focused after 1960. The Walker’s holdings include more than 13,000 individual pieces including books, costumes, drawings, media works, paintings, photography, prints, and sculpture. In 2015, the Walker celebrated the 75th anniversary of its founding as a public art center with a yearlong exhibition, Art at the Center: 75 Years of Walker Collections. Some collection highlights include:

• Chuck Close, Big Self-Portrait
• Franz Marc, Die grossen blauen Pferde (The Large Blue Horses)
• Edward Hopper, Office at Night
• Yves Klein, Suaire de Mondo Cane (Mondo Cane Shroud)
• Goshka Macuga, Lost Forty
• Andy Warhol, 16 Jackies

Performing Arts

Live performance art is a major part of the Walker’s programming and it is seen as a leader in exhibiting the medium. In 1940, the Walker began presenting local dance, poetry, and concerts, largely organized by volunteers. By 1963, this group had become Center Opera, the Walker’s performing arts program focused on exhibiting new works emphasizing visual design. In 1970, Center Opera disbanded from the Walker and became Minnesota Opera. The same year, Performing Arts was officially designated as a department of the Walker Art Center.

Since the 1960s, Performing Arts at the Walker has commissioned 265 performance works. In addition, the department programs a 25-show season every year that includes performances ranging from performance art, theater, dance, spoken word and music. It is one of the largest performing arts programs of its kind found in a museum in the nation. A number of artists have long histories working with and performing at the Walker, most notably choreographers Bill T. Jones, Meredith Monk, and Merce Cunningham, for whom the Walker staged the retrospective Life Performs Art in 1998. As a longtime associate of the Merce Cunning ham Dance Company, the Walker was able to acquire 150 art objects central to the company’s history from the Cunningham Foundation in 2011. The agreement included sculptures, sets, costumes and other works by artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

Moving Image

The Walker Art Center's film and video programs feature both contemporary and historical works. In the 1940s, the Walker identified moving images (mostly movies, but also experimental films) as integral to contemporary life. Artists of that time were experimenting with film’s formal properties, such as light, motion, and sound, while also separating film art from conventional narrative cinema.

In 1973, the Film/Video Department was officially formed and the Edmond R. Ruben Film and Video Study Collection was established, along with an endowment to fund the development of the archive. Ruben, a leading figure in film exhibition in the Upper Midwest, and his wife Evelyn believed in collecting films as a way of preserving the art form. Today, with more than eight hundred fifty titles, the Ruben Collection brings together classic and contemporary cinema as well as documentaries, avant-garde films, and video works by artists. It holds works by visual artists that range from Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, and Fernand Léger to extensive contemporary work by William Klein, Derek Jarman, Bruce Conner, Marcel Broodthaers, Matthew Barney, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, and experimental artists such as Paul Sharits and Stan Brakhage.

Design

The Walker Art Center maintains a professional, in-house design and editorial department to fulfill its various communication needs. The department is responsible for the design and editing of all printed materials, including the creation and planning of publications such as exhibition catalogues, bi-monthly magazines, and books, as well as exhibition and event graphics, signage programs, and promotional campaigns.

Additionally, the department organizes design-related projects and programs, such as lectures, exhibitions, and special commissions. Over the course of its 60-plus year history, the department has organized many important exhibitions on architecture and design, and has served as a vital forum for contemporary design issues, bringing hundreds of world-renowned architects, designers, and critics to the Twin Cities through programs such as the Insights design lecture series, which celebrated its 30th year in 2016. During the 1940s, the Walker built two "idea houses" exhibiting the latest in building materials, furnishings and architectural design trends. From the late 1960s until the early ’90s, the museum's design curator Mildred Friedman helped conceive and stage exhibitions on, among other topics, the Dutch avant-garde movement De Stijl, the design process at the Modernist furniture company Herman Miller, the history of graphic design, and traditional and contemporary Japanese arts, crafts and culture. For more than 30 years, the Walker has also offered the Mildred S. Friedman Design Fellowship, a yearlong program for young designers.

New Media

The Walker’s New Media Initiatives group oversees mnartists.org, an online database of Minnesota artists and organizations that provides a digital gathering place for the local arts community. Through a partnership with the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Walker manages ArtsConnectEd, an online resource for arts educators that draws from both institutions’ permanent collection resources.

In 1998, the Walker acquired äda'web, an early net art website curated by Benjamin Weil and designed by Vivian Selbo. äda'web's first official project went up in May 1995, although it had been informally active since February of the same year.

In 2011, the Walker website was relaunched as a newsstyle website that features essays, interviews, and videos by both Walker staff and guest writers, as well as curated news links about global art and culture. The relaunch was met with positive reviews around the art world.

Education and Public Programs

Learning is emphasized as a core experience at the Walker through a mix of education programs, community building efforts, and interpretive projects. The department conducts community, family, interpretive, public, school, teen, and tour programs, as well as mnartists.org. Each division offers programs and activities in visual art, performing arts, film/video, new media, design, and architecture. To inform these undertakings, the staff work with Walker curators and partners from local organizations, artists, schools, and community groups. Advisory groups such as the Walker Art Center Teen Arts Council, Tour Guide Council, and the Parent Advisory Group are also implemented in the department for the Walker to further build relationships with its audience.