ARRIVAL: Many items from the Cunningham acquisition are now living at the Walker.  In preparation for the November opening of Dance Works I: Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg, the art storage basement is filled with Robert Rauschenberg-designed costumes and set pieces (or decors, as Merce referred to them).  Rauschenberg collaborated with Merce Cunningham on pieces from 1954-1964, 1977, 2000, and…

We wouldn’t be doing the Cunningham acquisition justice if we didn’t have at least one story about food.  Here is a short anecdote and recipe for John Cage’s almond cookies, a treat that made the rounds through the Merce Cunningham Dance Company establishment and its friends.  Cage and Cunningham were introduced to a macrobiotic diet by Yoko Ono, and the cookies reflect those healthy precepts.  Merce…

This conversation was originally published in the July/August 2011 issue ofWalker magazine. Waters’ exhibition, Absentee Landlord, is on view through July 2012.  Filmmaker and pop culture provocateur John Waters has played many roles in his career, but never that of curator until now. At the invitation of the Walker, he enacted a “curatorial intervention” in one of its current collection exhibitions and…

This is the original teaser for , an ongoing project by Pedro Reyes that explores the intersections of mass entertainment, ideology and contemporary art. The teaser was produced for the Yokohama Triennial in Japan in 2008, and was followed by a television pilot shot in Mexico City in 2009. He worked closely with Japanese master puppeteer Takumi Ota for over a year to design and build the puppets…

Baby Marx began as Mexican artist Pedro Reyes’idea for a television sitcom in which puppet versions of key figures in the history of economics are brought back to life. Intended as a way to make the lofty and often distorted fundamentals of socialism and capitalism accessible to a broad audience, the piece has undergone several iterations since its inception four years ago. For his upcoming…

China, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia … and now Minneapolis. Clara Kim arrives here August 1 after some particularly intensive globetrotting (more on that below). She was was most recently gallery director/curator at REDCAT, downtown Los Angeles’ center for innovative visual, media and performing arts, where she has worked since its inception in 2003. In her new role, Kim will…

Of the Venice Biennale exhibitions I have attended throughout my years as a museum professional, the most recent installment fell especially flat. This was true of the main exhibition ILLUMInazioni, organized by veteran Swiss curator Bice Curiger, and the myriad national pavilions curated independently by participating countries and located in the Giardini and many off-site venues throughout…

This morning John Waters shook hands with a fan at the downtown Minneapolis CVS Pharmacy en route to the Walker, where he appeared in front of Claes Oldenburg’s giant French fries sculpture to shoot a short video welcome for his new exhibition, Absentee Landlord. He then proceeded to the Cargill Lounge, where he charmed a group of media folks before leading them on a preview tour of the…

We’re feeling the love. There are two reasons to celebrate today: It’s both the Association of Art Museum Directors’ Art Museum Day and the International Council of Museum’s International Museum Day. (And yesterday was all about sharing your favorite Museum Memories via #MusMem on Twitter.) The theme of International Museum Day this year is Museum and Memory: Objects Tell Your Story. What could be a…