Public Engagement, Learning & Impact

• Mikile Baker, Youth Programs Coordinator
• Savannah Bustillo, Educator
• Roman Feldhahn, Educator
• Emily Gastineau, Editor, Mn Artists
• Jessica Hakala, Department Coordinator
• Amanda Hunt, Head of Public Engagement, Learning & Impact
• Sarah Lampen, Manager of Lifelong Learning & Accessibility
• Morgan Lee, Education Programs Coordinator
• Kaya Lovestrand, Digital Communications Coordinator, Mn Artists
• Leia Wambach, Family & Access Programs Coordinator
• Simona Zappas, Youth Programs Associate

Innovative educational activities and a commitment to providing access to art for all people have been at the heart of the Walker Art Center’s mission since its inception as a public institution.

 

1940s

In 1940, the Walker opened with a roster of offerings that included free art classes and lectures, a children’s newspaper, a student council and exhibitions, statewide extension activities, and free meeting space for community groups. Its civic-minded spirit is illustrated in such early programs as the Inquisition, a lively weekly event in which audience members were invited to “stump the experts” on a panel of specialists with their questions about art. In 1942, classes ranging from painting and sculpture to industrial and interior design were codified into a formal art school that remained active until 1950.

 

1950s

During the 1950s, under the stewardship of Walker director H. Harvard Arnason, an emphasis was placed on helping audiences interpret rather than make art. While at the Walker, Arnason continued as chair of the art department at the University of Minnesota, which created a stronger working relationship between the two institutions. His desire to expand the museum experience into the classroom furthered the Walker’s partnerships with the Minneapolis Public Schools. The program focus also expanded from visual arts to other forms, including dance, film, poetry, design, and architecture. The creation of educational exhibitions for children during this period, including Weather and Art, The Artist’s Studio, and Seeing into Space, set a precedent for future experiential and gallery-based projects.

 

1960s–1980s

During his 30-year tenure as director (1961–1990), Martin Friedman championed creative risk-taking and nontraditional approaches to education. His ability to leverage new sources of federal and local funding fostered the development of innovative programs such as the 1968 Walker-Bryant Art Workshop, the Walker’s first community-based outreach program for teens. New Learning Spaces and Places, an ambitious 1974 exhibition accompanied by an issue of Design Quarterly, examined new contexts and spaces for learning, including a prescient exploration of ways that computer technology would impact the classroom.

In 1979, with major support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Walker launched a three-year, interdisciplinary initiative entitled the Meanings of Modernism, which formalized its commitment to fostering adult education programs by inviting artists, musicians, choreographers, filmmakers, writers, art critics, and scholars to discuss contemporary art. “Participatory,” “experimental,” and “artist-driven” are words that describe much of the programming of the 1980s.

In 1984, the citywide ArtFest celebrated the opening of new educational spaces that included the Walker’s Art Lab, a multipurpose studio classroom. The department soon began commissioning artists to create playful, interactive installations for the space, a practice that continues in the enhanced Star Tribune Foundation Art Lab designed by Herzog & de Meuron. The department frequently works with national and local artists on residency projects and commissions.

 

1990s–2000s

The opening of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in 1988 literally provided an expanded field on which to engage visitors of all ages. When director Kathy Halbreich arrived in 1991, she made a commitment to expand the Walker’s engagement with audiences. Ongoing programs such as Free First Saturday and Free Thursday encourage visitors to participate in the institution’s full spectrum of offerings. In 1994, the Walker became the first art museum in the country to devote staff solely to creating programs for teenagers. Its cornerstone is the Walker Art Center Teen Arts Council (WACTAC), a rotating group of 12 young people who develop activities of particular interest to their peers. Teens are frequent participants in artist-in-residence projects, which for more than a decade have brought prominent visual, performing, and media artists together with the public in the creation of new works.

 

Further outreach happened with Walker on Wheels, a commissioned mobile art lab that traveled throughout the area and provided a flexible space for activities and gatherings. Walker educators and curators have continued to experiment with interpretive programs that reflect changing artistic practices and encourage active engagement with the art and artists of our time.

 

The Andersen Window Gallery, a focused study space within the galleries, invited visitors to take a closer look at contemporary art and culture. Early installations explored the collection decade by decade, beginning with Edward Hopper’s Office at Night (1940), while later iterations showcased the work and processes of artists-in-residence such as filmmaker Spencer Nakasako in 2001, whose in-gallery video booth allowed visitors to record their own stories. For children and families, the WAC Packs filled with interpretive tools and the Artwork of the Month brochures encouraged in-gallery learning. The advent of the Internet led to such pioneering projects as ArtsConnectEd, a website for teachers, students, and parents developed with the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

 

With the Walker’s building expansion in 2005, the possibilities for direct participation in creative processes were multiplied. Dialog, an interactive table, provided visitors with information about artworks on display though media resources drawn from the collections and archives. The Best Buy Arcade, a space for changing installations, offers visitors immersive experiences with art. For its debut, it hosted Dolphin Oracle II (2004), an interactive work by Piotr Szyhalski and Richard Shelton that uses digital animation and artificial intelligence to answer questions posed by visitors.

 

2010 and beyond

From 2010 to 2013, the Walker facilitated an ambitious three-year summerlong project entitled Open Field. Adopting the commons as a philosophical and programmatic framework, Open Field imagined a new kind of public gathering space—one that empowered participants as both producer or participant. The project invited the public to share their own creative interests with minimal mediation and modest support from the museum. These activities occurred alongside a series of curated residences by artists. Open Field also prototyped and inspired the way in which the Walker approached the design of its upper hillside, which opens in June 2017 as the Wurtele Upper Garden, conceptualizing the space as a programmatic park as opposed to a static space for the exhibition of public sculpture.