This is the latest video from Mexican artist Pedro Reyes’ Walker exhibition Baby Marx, which explores the intersections between ideology, entertainment and contemporary art. A couple of weeks ago, Karl Marx and Adam Smith took a field trip to New York City to visit the Occupy Wall Street protest in Liberty Plaza–separately, and with different views on the issues at hand. Marx sees in the current…

Here are the latest scenes from Pedro Reyes’ ongoing project, Baby Marx. Shot at the Walker in August, the episodes have just been released. In these scenes, the action takes a melodramatic turn as Karl Marx and Adam Smith have a falling out over the “green” movement and Smith’s penchant for consumerism. Hearts heavy, the two wander separately around the Walker, lamenting the breakup and meeting the…

Last week Karl Marx and Adam Smith, two of the stars of the Pedro Reyes exhibition/video series Baby Marx, made an impromptu trip from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis to Occupy Wall Street in New York’s Financial District. The artist had been tracking the protests and decided the puppets…

When artists such as Tino Sehgal, Meredith Monk, Danh Vo, Trisha Brown, or Merce Cunningham enter the Walker Art Center’s collections, some vexing issues arise when it comes to cataloguing their often ephemeral, multidisciplinary, and indiscrete works. On Nov. 4, presenters, curators, archivists, and researchers from around the country will come to the Walker and spend the day together talking about what…

One bonus of working at the Walker is the proximity to primary resources. One minute you can be sitting at your desk, in total office mode, and a few stairs and hallways later you are in the theater, or a gallery space, or art storage, face to face with the actual objects of your study. Around every corner there are visual reminders of why you do what you do. As the Walker begins to unpack some of the…

“Our emotional environment is poor and dangerous. Artistic work can’t change it, but it can transcribe it. It can also give an opinion, which we are never asked for.” After my recent visit to the 12th installment of the Istanbul Biennial, which closes November 13, I was struck by the overwhelming sense of nostalgia and lament that pervades this major survey of international contemporary art. Curated by…

Walker members have more fun taking advantage of  A Think & A Drink: Member Events.  Last Friday, after most of the museum shut down, we toured the exhibition Absentee Landlord, curated by John Waters.  Almost 60 of our favorite members were in attendance to celebrate the arbiter of trash! We started off the evening with a tour of the exhibition.  Below you’ll find one of our fabulous tour guides Tanya! …

Franz West’s Sitzwuste (2000) — three sausage-shaped aluminum sculptures designed as sitting spaces — are back, but with a big change. The 13-foot pieces were reinstalled on Friday on the Walker hillside near the entrance to James Turrell’s Sky Pesher. Although they don’t have the garish neon enamel they did when they were first installed in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden 11 years ago, they still…

Earlier this week, Walker assistant curator Bartholomew Ryan wrote a thoughtful piece for MPR’s State of the Arts blog about how 9/11 has influenced art making. Responding to a question posed there – “What art resonates most with you when thinking about the events of 9/11?” – Walker colleagues Dean Otto (film/video curator) and Siri Engberg and Betsy Carpenter (visual arts curators) and I selected works…