Walker Art Center

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Free Forms: An Interview with Lauren Cornell

By Latitudes May 3, 2013

What challenges, expectations, and new possibilities does digital culture and social media present to contemporary art institutions? Barcelona-based curatorial office Latitudes (Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna) continues its ongoing #OpenCurating series with a conversation about culture and connectivity with former Rhizome director and current New Museum curator Lauren Cornell. More

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

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The Plot Thickens

By Julie Caniglia April 30, 2013

You’d think that among theater people, the biggest control freaks would be an artistic director and a playwright—those responsible for the company’s aesthetic vision and the text used onstage. But when Elevator Repair Service’s John Collins and playwright Sibyl Kempson talk about Fondly, Collette Richland, it’s clear that instead of obsessing about control, both are exhilarated by the lack thereof. More

Elevator Repair Service’s Fondly, Collette Richland will be performed May 16–18, 2013.

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Digression(s) and Entry Point(s)

By Latitudes April 22, 2013

What “old rules” about art programming, production, and distribution has the Internet broken? Barcelona’s Latitudes is leading an investigation into such questions of culture and connectivity. Their new #OpenCurating dialogue features Singapore-based artist, curator, and writer Heman Chong, whose work examines “the philosophies, reasons, and methods of individuals and communities imagining the future.”  More

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

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Bob Mould’s Unbroken Line

By Jeff Severns Guntzel April 16, 2013

“Where did punk rock start? Who cares? It’s not where did it start, it’s why did it start?” said Bob Mould in 1981. Before the Bob Mould Band and Sugar, before a prolific solo career, Mould was part of punk mainstays Hüsker Dü. Jeff Severns Guntzel looks at Mould’s Minneapolis origins and the unbroken line—personal, musical, and political—linking his work with the band and all that has come since. More

The Bob Mould Band plays Rock the Garden 2013 on June 15, 2013, in a lineup that includes Dan Deacon, Low, Silversun Pickups, and Metric.

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Something Out of Nothing

April 9, 2013

“I’m not an ecologist, but I like the idea of recycling in terms of specific needs,” says Abraham Cruzvillegas, whose series of found-object assemblages shares its name with a DIY building process in the Mexico City neighborhood of his youth. Autoconstrucción is “about scarcity and solutions, ingenuity, and how you can conceive a philosophy of life—that you can make things out of nothing.” More

Abraham Cruzvillegas: The Autoconstrucción Suites is on view March 23–September 22, 2013

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The Campification of the Divine

By Paul Schmelzer April 8, 2013

“Culturally, I’m a cold-hearted colonialist,” says Andy Messerschmidt, whose work borrows ideas from world religions, from Buddhist mandalas to Indonesian shamanistic rituals to American holidays, in his art. The tendency is on display in his new Walker commission, which he says explores the “compression of loaded symbols of divinity and how they work in moire to create a meta-symbol of the divine.” More

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Visionary, Mensch, Dude: 60 on Zorn at 60

By Paul Schmelzer April 3, 2013

When we asked an array of musicians and artists—including Laurie Anderson, Nels Cline, and Bill Frisell—to share their reflections about John Zorn on the occasion of his 60th birthday, three words kept recurring: “visionary,” “mensch,” “dude.” In a two-part celebration of Zorn’s sixth decade, we share 60 birthday wishes for this celebrated improviser, experimenter, and genre-jumping producer.  More

The Walker hosts John Zorn @ 60, a music marathon/birthday celebration, April 6, 2013.

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Video: Job Wouters Brings the Walker Home

March 28, 2013

Inspired by Asian calligraphy and cowboy lettering, as well as his own history in graffiti, Amsterdam-based artist Job Wouters recently created a hand-painted mural, Home, in the Walker lobby. “A museum can be so much more than a place where some well-lit pieces hang and you feel scared and not at ease,” he said, explaining the title. “It’s very important to feel safe and comfortable at a museum.” More

Job Wouters’ mural Home was commissioned in conjunction with the 2013 Insights Design Lecture Series.

Art News from Elsewhere More

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Via gramsci-monument.com

Gramsci Monument (External)

Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument, to run July 1 thru Sept. 15, will host a range of activities—including a radio station—from a structure on the grounds of a Bronx housing development. The Dia-backed project is the last of his philosopher-based monuments.

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Via hyperallergic.com

Totally Uncool (External)

Usually silent on ripoffs of her art, Barbara Kruger comments on a suit by clothing brand Supreme (with its Krugeresque logo) against designer Leah McSweeney. Of the “uncool jokers” involved, she writes, “I’m waiting for them all to sue me for copyright infringement.”

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Via latimes.com

Art Formula (External)

Spite doesn’t seem to underpin art in William Powhida’s new LA show, which apes artworld “formulas” from Cattelan-style taxidermy to Richterian abstraction, writes Holly Myers. He sincerely asks, “How does the art world work and how should we feel about that?”


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Via frieze.com

On Being Curated (External)

What’s it feel like being curated? Eight artists weigh in on the rise of the curator and what it means, including W.A.G.E., Slavs and Tatars, and Daniel Buren, who revisits his 1972 statement “Exhibiting Exhibitions.”

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Via youtube.com

Nanocinema (External)

A promotion for IBM’s research on atomic memory, this is also the world’s smallest stop-action animation. A Boy and his Atom was made by photographing atoms stacked two high and magnifying the results 100 million times to create a story.

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Via npr.org

How Artists Work (External)

For Louis Armstrong it was weed. For Tesla, an 8 pm dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria, and for Kierkegaard, caffeine. In his new book Daily Rituals, Mason Currey looks at how famed creators—including Richter, Tharp, and Picasso—get work done.


Minnesota Art News

Via mnartists.org

The Metamorphosis

Lightsey Darst profiles mercurial dancer Nic Lincoln, soon to be on stage for YES, an evening of solos by five choreographers: Judith Howard, Megan Mayer, Penelope Freeh, Kristin Van Loon and Wynn Fricke.  More

Via mnartists.org

Dreaming a World Into Being

The experience of Emily Johnson’s latest dance work, Niicugni, is like being immersed in the waking dream of a young woman who, with ancestors and friends, navigates the terrain of memory and art-making.  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

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Commentary

Jim Hodges’ Sculptural Boulders, Untitled (2011)

Created by adhering shimmering stainless-steel skins to the surfaces of four 400-million-year-old stones, Jim Hodges sculptural boulders capture and cast sunlight, creating an effect that is both monumental and airy. More

Walker Channel
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Artist Talk

Blackboard Conversation: Speech, Politics, Activism

Karen Mirza and Brad Butler are joined by artist Sharon Hayes and sociologist Avery Gordon for a series of reflections on the intersections of politics, history, speech, and radical activism. More

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Artist Talk

Studio Talk with Matt Connors and Matt Wolf

What does a director of documentaries learn from a painter, and vice versa? Does it influence how they think about or make their own work? Matt Wolf, one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” interviews his… More

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Trailer

Abraham Cruzvillegas: The Autoconstrucción Suites

Abraham Cruzvillegas (b. 1968) is one of the most important conceptual artists of his generation to come out of the vibrant art scene in Mexico. Over the past 10 years, Cruzvillegas has developed a riveting body of work that… 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

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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

Via walkerart.org

Roger Ebert on Werner Herzog

In April 1999, on the occasion that produced Werner Herzog’s historic “Minnesota Declaration,” Roger Ebert led a dialogue with the famed director. To commemorate Ebert’s April 4, 2013, passing, we look at his essay for that event.  More

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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