Walker Reader

08/28/2020

"For Siah Armajani, building was more than an intellectual exercise: it was also a search for home," writes Vicky Sung in remembrance of the Tehran-born, Minneapolis-based artist who passed away August 27 at age 81. Best known for pioneering public artworks that exist at the intersection of art and architecture, Armajani's six-decade career saw the artist exploring science, politics, and place, all in service to a deeply personal philosophy of being.

"For Siah Armajani, building was more than an intellectual exercise: it was also a search for home," writes Victoria Sung in remembrance of the Tehran-born, Minneapolis-based artist who passed away August 27 at age 81. Best known for pioneering public artworks that exist at the intersection of art a...

08/25/2020

"On some blocks 'unity' reads like we got this, on others it sounds like calm down. Some wood panels burst with color and Black faces, some simply with the nearest spray paint say 'Black Owned, Minority Owned, Kids Live Here.' Murals and graffiti jewel the city as it thinks about what it would mean to shed the things that hunt our skin." Twin Cities–based poet Danez Smith reflects on the Minneapolis storefront art, and commerce, responding to the police killing of George Floyd.

The poet and writer on how activism creates art.

08/20/2020

Commissioned to create soundtracks for silent films in the Walker's collection for our annual Sounds for Silents showcase, Twin Cities musicians including Dameun Strange and Lady Midnight noticed events in the world—from deepening isolation and anxiety related to the pandemic to the uprising over the police murder of George Floyd—permeating their thoughts and the resulting soundtracks. Here, we share the thinking of this year's participants.

Virtual Sound for Silents 2020 screens online from 8 pm August 20 through 5 pm September 8.

Commissioned to create soundtracks for silent films in the Walker's collection for our annual Sounds for Silents showcase, Twin Cities musicians including Andrew Broder and Lady Midnight noticed events in the world—from deepening isolation and anxiety related to the pandemic to the police murder o...

08/13/2020

In conversation with Ana Janevski, artist Simone Forti talks about how she's been occupying herself during pandemic, from making a series of paper-bag drawings to inventing the masque-culotte, a COVID mask made from underpants.

In this interview, the artist reflects on crawling, art-making, and seemingly arbitrary objects.

08/10/2020

"Limitations foster creativity." Dance Magazine's Courtney Escoyne looks at the best dance projects to come out of quarantine, including the Walker's "Come On In," a digital counterpart to Faye Driscoll's first solo museum exhibition.

Limitations foster creativity. While unable to gather in person due to COVID-19, dancers, choreographers and companies have taken to the internet to create new projects conceived for the digital sphere. Here are just a few of our favorites.

07/21/2020

Keith Sonnier, an artist in the Walker collection, has died at age 78. Aiming to expand sculpture's boundaries, he used unconventional materials—from fabric, foam, and satin to police scanners, rubber, and neon lights—"to psychologically evoke certain kinds of feelings."

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/keith-sonnier-neon-light-sculptor-dead-1202694802/

Pictured: Keith Sonnier, Dis-Play II, 1970 (via ARTnews).

07/20/2020

The subject of the “room”—from the artist’s studio to domestic settings to public places—has captured the interest of artists throughout history. As many of us remain quarantined in our homes (or are perhaps are finally venturing outside), curators Siri Engberg and Jadine Collingwood take us on a virtual tour of works in the exhibition Five Ways In—featuring art by Alec Soth, Wing Young Huie, Sharon Lockhart, and others—to explore how artists convey the routines, pleasures, and complexities of our lives indoors.

The subject of the “room”—from the artist’s studio to domestic settings to public places—has captured the interest of artists throughout history. As many of us remain quarantined in our homes (or are perhaps are finally venturing outside), curators Siri Engberg and Jadine Collingwood take ...

07/17/2020

"This repatriation is symbolic in that it’s not often, or perhaps has never happened, where the owners just hand over a building to a Native organization." After 10 years as a contemporary art center, Yale Union in Portland, OR has announced that it's shutting down and transferring ownership of its land and its 1908 building to the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation.

This "perhaps has never happened, where the owners just hand over a building to a Native organization."

07/15/2020

The Many Faces of : Art historian Isabelle Loring Wallace looks at the recurring motif of the fractured face in Johns's art and its surprising link to references from Picasso and Grünewald to a 1950s drawing by a girl with schizophrenia.

READ: https://wlkr.art/JJohnsFaces

Pictured: Jasper Johns, Untitled, 1988.

07/15/2020

"There's something virus-like about social media, in the way it operates, in the way it taps into our physiology on a chemical level in our brain." Labor Camp—aka Minneapolis-based artist Piotr Szyhalski—talks with the The Brooklyn Rail's Elise Armani about , viral media, and his daily COVID-19 Reports.

Piotr Szyhalski is a Polish-born, US-based artist. Trained in Poland as a poster designer, Szyhalski has been living in Minneapolis since 1994, where he teaches at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. In 1998, Szyhalski began Labor Camp, an ongoing artistic framework that transcends medium and...