In the spirit of the season, when various media outlets take to recommending more or less extravagant “winter getaways,” we suggest basing a trip on some favorite recent additions to the Walker collections. If you enjoyed swaying in the hammocks that were part of the Hélio Oiticica and Neville D’Almeida’s CC5 Hendrixwar/Cosmococa Programa-in-Progress, on view at the Walker last summer …  … then book a…

Alec Soth writes: Thanks to everyone who participated in the 3rd From Here To There Flickr assignment. The assignment was to take a picture of a non-photographer and then have this person take a picture of you. My hope was to illustrate that amateur photographs are often as good or better than those made by ‘serious’ photographers. An inspiration was a project I saw in Foam Magazine called Manélud…

For the 20 days leading up to the opening of Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the staff decided to try an experiment in the realm of the internet, specifically through Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter. Their goal was to introduce different aspects of Klein’s prolific career and illustrate the range of his projects and the scope of what would be…

Alec Soth’s third and latest Flickrproject is in full gear aiming to have partiicpants find answers to the question, “Why are amateur photographer’s so damn good?” Soth has directed participants first to take a picture of a non-photographer; then have the non-photographer take a picture of them using either the same camera or a different one. These images are then placed side by side with a brief…

Alec Soth announced a winner for his second flickr assignment this morning — a challenge that had participants opening a story by photographing a stranger, and asking that person to show them something. As he did with the first assignment, he singled out some honorable mentions first: “I love everything about these Flickr assignments except for one thing: having to pick a winner. So many good stories…

What’s in a name? Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers, the title of Klein’s newly opened retrospective, definitely radiates a mysterious kind of cool. But what does it mean? Co-curator Philippe Vergne explains the origins of “Avec le vide, les pleins pouvoirs”  in his essay for the exhibition catalogue, noting that it was a comment left by writer/philosopher Albert Camus in the guest book at Yves Klein…

For Yves Klein the act of showing up was everything. His presence created the art and in so doing he created remarkable events.  Invoking the spirit of Yves Klein — for surely he will be present in that form at tomorrow night’s After Hours party in honor of his retrospective — here are a few ghosts of Walker opening parties with some magical moments of their own. (Click on images for a larger view…

Walker staff photographer Cameron Wittig took these images last Friday as curators and crew installed artworks for the Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers retrospective. One visitor at the presentation at the Hirshhorn in Washington, D.C. called it “flawlessly curated,” “an utter delight,” and “worthy of repeated visits” (all in the same sentence!); at the Washington Post, critic Blake Gopnik opened his…

With two weeks down, participants in Alec Soth’s Flickr project have been asked to be brave, curious souls and venture out into the world to tell a short story through pictures. As a way of generating the story, Soth asked participants to first find and photograph a stranger, then “Ask the stranger to show you something (their house, their car, their cat, their body, etc).” From there … well, things could go…