Walker Art Center

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Low: Rock the Garden’s Own Rite of Spring?

By Philip Bither June 18, 2013

Low’s Rock the Garden set—a droning, 27-minute version of “Do You Know How to Waltz?”—angered some audience members, who tweeted and blogged their ire. Curator Philip Bither, however, was awed by the set, likening it to music by Hendricks, Sunn O)))), and Cage. “I guess the kind of riots that erupted in Paris after Stravinsky’s premiere of The Rite of Spring in 1913 now happen online,” he writes. More

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Experience Rock the Garden 2013 in 300 Seconds

June 18, 2013

From the deluge of rain that sparked a parking-ramp dance party with Dan Deacon to Low’s 27-minute, one-song set, Bob Mould’s tour through his career with Hüsker Dü and beyond to showstoppers by Silversun Pickups and headliner Metric, the Walker videography crew captures all of Rock the Garden in five minutes—all set to Metric’s “Gold Gun Girls.”  More

Reverse Engineering a Poem

By Elizabeth Murphy June 13, 2013

Frank O’Hara famously asked, “What’s the point of a poem if I have a phone?” Elizabeth Murphy reframes the issue with a few questions of her own: What’s a love song for if you can tweet? And—taking it further—what’s the value of real, physical art spaces in contemporary American cultural life when there are online outlets like Artsy and Google Art?  More

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From Suburban Lawn to Edible Estate

By Anna Bierbrauer June 10, 2013

In a weekend that involved a sod cutter, 17 bags of leaf litter mulch, 30 yards of compost, 40 shovels, a wood chipper, thousands of plants, and an army of volunteers, a suburban front yard in Woodbury, Minn., was transformed into Edible Estate #15, the last garden in artist Fritz Haeg’s global series. Here’s a photo essay documenting the evolution of the Schoenherr family’s front lawn.  More

Edible Estate #15 is part of At Home in the City, Fritz Haeg’s six-month residency (May 11–November 24, 2013).

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The Artist Constructs Himself

By Verónica Gerber Bicecci June 1, 2013

“The artist builds himself and unmakes himself piece by piece; he self-constructs, as if he were a wall where cement is always wet and bricks can be shifted.” Linking her studies with Abraham Cruzvillegas to her grandfather’s unfinished house, left behind when the family fled Argentina’s dictatorship, Verónica Gerber Bicecci muses on paradigms that allow us to “start anew, because nothing is finished.” More

This essay is excerpted from the catalogue for Abraham Cruzvillegas: The Autoconstrucción Suites; the exhibition is on view March 23–September 22, 2013.

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Take a Tour of Walker on the Green

By Scott Stulen May 24, 2013

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, the Walker delivers Walker on the Green, a fresh round of miniature golf. Designed by artists, architects, engineers, and putt-putt connoisseurs, the two eight-hole courses include 15 novelties ranging from garden gnome foosball to a geodesic dome housing miniature versions of the Walker building and the Spoonbridge and Cherry.  More

Walker on the Green: Artist-Designed Mini Golf runs May 23-September 8, 2013, in honor of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden’s 25th anniversary.

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An #OpenCurating Interview with Asia Art Archive

By Latitudes May 20, 2013

Based in Hong Kong, Asia Art Archive has since 2000 sought to “facilitate understanding, research, and writing in the field, enrich existing global narratives, and re-imagine the role of the archive.” Concluding its #OpenCurating series on contemporary art and new technology, Barcelona’s Latitudes talks with Chantal Wong, Hammad Nasar, and Lydia Ngai about AAA’s work archiving art for Asia and the world.  More

Latitudes’ #OpenCurating project is supported by the Walker, its exclusive content partner.

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The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden at 25

May 17, 2013

“The public took to it instantly,” says Martin Friedman, Walker director emeritus, on the 1988 opening of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. “Everyone had a comment, everyone had something to say. They took ownership right away because it was a public space to begin with.” Now, 25 years and 8 million visitors later, we check back in with Friedman and others who were there when this beloved park was born. More

The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden’s 25th Anniversary celebration kicks off with Artist-Designed Minigolf, beginning May 23, 2013.

Art News from Elsewhere More

VA

Via forecastpublicart.org

Public Art Boom (External)

A public art revolution is brewing in St. Paul, where the city has brought in privately funded “city artists” to work alongside public servants. Public Art Review chronicles how these artists explore creative forms of “placemaking” and civic engagement.

VA

Via artinfo.com

Art Fair “Slum” (External)

Armored police forcibly evicted protesters occupying Tadashi Kawamata and Christophe Scheidegger’s Art Favela at Art Basel Friday. About 100 people were protesting the “decadence of including a slum setting as part of one the world’s biggest art fairs.”

PA

Via startribune.com

Punk Rock the Garden (External)

Rock the Garden 2013 included “the two most punk-rock moments” in RTG history, plus three other performances that “full-on, gimme-earplugs, don’t-forget-the-smoke-machine rocked,” writes Chris Riemenschneider. Look for our reports on the festival soon.


FV

Via vulture.com

Surveillance on Film (External)

With spying in the news in a big way, Vulture looks at current events through the prism (if you will) of film history. It tracks depictions of snitching, stalking, and high-tech surveillance from Metropolis (1927) to The Dark Knight (2008).

EC

Via creativetimereports.org

Reimagining Public Space (External)

Ten years after exhibiting his work on public space use in Turkey in our show How Latitudes Become Forms, Can Altay reports from Istanbul on the “humor, creativity and critique” he’s witnessed at the #OccupyGezi protests of the past few weeks.

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Via lttds.blogspot.com.es

Bags of the Biennale (External)

Latitudes reviews the ubiquitous totes of the Venice Biennale, from the Tucano-designed official bag (“its uncompromising blackness” has a “vital rather than dour spirit”) to the bag for Jesper Just’s Danish Pavilion (“Charismatic artist. Woeful tote”).


Minnesota Art News

Via mnartists.org

Northern Spark Does Lowertown

Lightsey Darst offers a diary from this year’s night-long Twin Cities festival: “It’s beautiful and it’s bullshit all at once. What you see depends very much on where you choose to stand.”  More

Via mnartists.org

The Geekhouse Always Wins

Sam Landman treats the world of comics conventions like a casino: Enjoy the cosplay and meet-&-greet, take a set amount of cash to buy books, and then leave while you’ve still got the “Nien Nunb is my co-pilot” shirt on your back.  More

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Commentary

Geoff McFetridge’s Site Fence Mural

Geoff McFetridge’s art has graced nearly every kind of surface—from Nike sneakers to toast (for a music video by OK Go). Now it appears on the Walker’s construction fencing, through a commission as part of our Insights Design… More

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Trailer

Job Wouters’ HOME Mural

Captured in time-lapse, here’s Amsterdam-based artist/designer Job Wouters—better known as Letman—creating his hand-painted Home mural in the Walker lobby. More

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Commentary

Artist Molly Zuckerman-Hartung Discusses her Work in Painter Painter

Artist Molly Zuckerman-Hartung discusses her work in the Walker Art Center exhibition Painter PainterMore

Walker Channel
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Trailer

Rock the Garden 2013 Time-lapse

Experience 24 hours of Rock the Garden 2013 in 5 minutes, set to the music of Metric. Copresented by the Walker Art Center and 89.3 The Current, the concert features Dan Deacon, Low, Bob Mould Band, Silversun Pickups, and Metric… More

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Trailer

Minneapolis Sculpture Garden 25th Anniversary

Support the Walker Art Center’s Garden Fund today! Since opening in 1988, the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden has become one of the most popular cultural destinations in the Twin Cities and all of Minnesota. A joint project of the… More

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Artist Talk

ArtPrize Pitch Night

It’s sort of like American Idol auditions for artists: five finalists take the stage to share proposals for a temporary public art installation in Grand Rapids, Michigan. That’s the site of the annual ArtPrize competition, which draws some 400,000 people who view… More

Quoted

Ongoing Series

Painter Painter Studio Sessions

In this ongoing web series, the 15 artists in the Walker-organized exhibition Painter Painter respond to an open-ended query about their practices.

Lowercase P

An election-year series on personal politics and the way artists contribute to the conversation on making a better society.

Conversations on the Commons

In the spirit of public exchange, the Walker presents a book examining our three-year experiment in participation and public space.

From the Archives

Slideshow

It Goes to Eleven

With the 2013 edition, we celebrate 11 summers of Rock the Garden. Here’s a look at the previous ten concerts, going all the way back to 1998’s inaugural event.  More

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Philip Bither

Trisha Brown: From Falling and Its Opposite, and All the In-Betweens

Philip Bither highlights some of Trisha Brown’s less-recognized but tremendously influential dance innovations, from aerial movement inventions to equipment-based performance. More

VA

Walker Channel

How to Disappear in America

As part of the 2010 exhibition The Talent Show, Evan Ratliff discussed his attempt to vanish—and how Wired readers followed the digital breadcrumbs to track him down.  More