Sharon Lockhart is known for making formally rigorous films and still photographs in staged settings. Represented in the Walker collection by a multimedia work, photos, and multiples, the artist recently took a moment to answer some of life’s most—and possibly least—pressing questions. What’s the last (or favorite) book you read? Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. What is one of the most…

One of the most iconic artists of her generation, Kiki Smith makes work containing unflinching and often exquisite meditations on the body, myth, and spirituality that, as Walker director Kathy Halbreich says, “possess the power to bring one to a complete stop.” Smith exhibits great fluency with a wide variety of media, yet she has often gravitated toward humble materials such as paper, clay, and fabric…

“It’s impossible to be bound by national borders when one talks about aesthetics. Nationality is not an aesthetic category, and I truly hope it never will be.” —Philippe Vergne This year’s edition of the Whitney Biennial, opening in New York City on March 2, is a historic one: it’s the first to be titled and the first organized without an American-born curator. Subtitled Day for Night, the survey is…

Rirkrit Tiravanija’s relationship with the Walker goes back to the 1995 exhibition Economies: Hans Accola and Rirkrit Tiravanija and his subsequent artist residency. Since then, he has realized many projects around the world and become one of the most influential thinker-practitioners in contemporary art. Fittingly embodying his peripatetic, gregarious existence, Tiravanija’s open, generous art often…

By calling Lynne Tillman’s work “so striking and original that it transforms the way you see the world, the way you think about and interact with your surroundings,” the Los Angeles Reader might as easily be describing Kiki Smith’s powerful yet vulnerable art as the writing of her longtime friend. The Walker exhibition catalogue Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980–2005 describes Smith’s craft in similar…