For The Quick and the Dead, we have put together several short video pieces, each looking at an artwork in the exhibition. The first two are available now: Both videos have been shot in high definition, and you can grab the highest quality video from The Quick and the Dead page in iTunes U. Additionally, we’ve produced a number of audio tracks to help contextualize the exhibition, available in iTunes…

While taking media folks on a preview tour of The Quick and the Deadthis morning, curator Peter Eleey mentioned Walter Pater’s famous quote about “all art aspiring to the condition of music.” There’s the making of it, and the “performing” — or exhibition — of it. Installing an artwork for its performance, then (rehearsal? practice?), might lie somewhere in between. And it’s probably not surprising that this…

The Quick and the Dead, one of the more ambitious exhibitions the Walker has organized, is getting installed in our galleries this week and next. We’ll be posting videos soon that show curator Peter Eleey talking about some of the works; for now, here’s an interview I did with him about the show for the new issue of Walker magazine. (The show opens April 25, with an After Hours preview party on the…

When I arrived at the museum as its new librarian in 1983, there was no actual collection of artists’ books. Seeds had been planted, however, in the form of a few pieces acquired from a 1981 exhibition, Artists’ Books, that had been organized by then chief curator Graham Beal—including the aptly titled Book by Lucas Samaras, currently on view in the exhibition Text/Messages: Books by Artists. This…

In examining the book as medium, material, and subject, the exhibition Text/Messages: Books by Artists includes a number of unusual works from the Walker Art Center Library’s collection of 1,600 artists’ books, illustrated volumes, and multiples. Some of these are only vaguely booklike, and many take a playful approach toward ideas about books as well as reading itself, our expectations of great…

On the morning of February 23, the cherry from Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s sculpture Spoonbridge and Cherry will be removed for restoration, by the Walker Art Center.  The beloved sculpture, part of the Walker’s permanent collection since 1988, when it was installed, is truly an iconic centerpiece of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The process will begin with Walker Art Center Sculpture…

Last October, Darsie Alexander’s sprawling retrospective of Austrian sculptor Franz West opened at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), where she had been senior curator of contemporary art. Now, as the Walker’s new chief curator overseeing programs in exhibitions, visual arts, design, performing arts, and film/video as well as the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Alexander is charged with bringing the…