For nearly four decades, Chuck Close has painted dozens of large-scale faces of family members, friends, and fellow artists, including Philip Glass, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman, and Kiki Smith. But, more than any other subject, he’s painted himself. The first such self-portrait, begun in 1967 and purchased in 1969 by the Walker Art Center, was followed by nearly 100 more, each exploring different media…

Everyone loves it and feels some ownership as they point out the center-piece spoon and cherry to their visitors; and now that it’s just across the way from what is rapidly becoming another Twin Cities landmark—the Walker’s gleaming new expansion—it’s even easier to find. As people drive by or stroll the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden grounds, however, they discover that they can’t say exactly how…

Chuck Close recently characterized the Walker Art Center as an “artist’s museum,” a place with “a tremendous record of incredible engagement with the people who make this stuff.” His relationship with the Walker goes back to 1969, when then-director Martin Friedman purchased Big Self-Portrait out of the artist’s studio. Close’s first self-portrait, the work was also his first sold to a museum and…

Known for exploring new realms of interactivity and aesthetics, Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija has cooked meals for gallery visitors, constructed a fully operational auto-body shop within a museum, built his own low-power television studio, and helped found The Land, a collaborative sustainability community near Chiang Mai, Thailand. Winner of the 2004 Hugo Boss Prize, he was featured in the 1995…

Since its opening in 1988, the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden has acquired a comfortable patina befitting the well-loved and well-tended public space it has become. Its gravel paths, lined with mature linden trees, are firmly tamped; its perennial garden blooms lush in late summer, and ivy now creeps thickly over its stone walls. More than five million people have strolled the Garden to date, making it…

How do curators design exhibitions? And how is a permanent collection developed? On the unprecedented installation of 11 galleries of Walker holdings, Curatorial Fellow Doryun Chong and Chief Curator Richard Flood discuss the collecting strategies behind the seven new exhibitions on view and the principles that guide the Walker’s Visual Arts program. Doryun Chong: This is the first time in Walker…

Nestled into the new garden on the Walker’s expanded campus is an underground pathway that leads visitors into a modest square chamber. Sky Pesher, 2005 (2005) by American artist James Turrell is a freestanding room-size structure with a 16-square-foot aperture at the apex of its curving white ceiling. Influenced by his studies in perceptual psychology and optical illusion, Turrell is known for…

A wooden door frame opens into a room within a room. As one passes through this seemingly unremarkable entryway, the frame’s other half, an unhinged door, is propped against the facing wall. Cut into the door, sans doorknob and hardware, are six inset panels arranged in a grid pattern that take the form of two stacked crosses, lending the space a meditative, chapel-like atmosphere. The surfaces of both…

Half shaman, half showman, a judo champion who “leapt into the void,” a mystic devoted to Saint Rita and self-identified as the painter of space who plotted an ultramarine blue revolution, an architect who dreamed of walls of fire and roofs of air, Yves Klein took the European art scene by storm through a career that barely lasted eight years (1954–1962). After that, it was impossible to look at painting…