Audio Recordings from the Walker Art Center Archives

The Walker Art Center Archives includes 340 reel-to-reel audio tapes. These tapes contain remarks by hundreds of contemporary artists from a wide range of disciplines who were active at the Walker between 1956 and 1977. The majority of the recordings are interviews with artists, most often conducted by a curator or the director of the Walker Art Center in conjunction with a major exhibition. Also contained in this collection are panel discussions involving critics and audiences; single-artist lectures addressing important topics of the day; and musical and literary performances by some of the 20th century's leading voices.

With a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, we have started to preserve these rich archival materials in a usable format and make them accessible to future generations of scholars, researchers and to the general public. A sampling of these newly digitized recordings is available here in RealAudio format.