Walker Reader

Alexandra Nicome

Alexandra Nicome is an interpretation fellow in Education and Public Programs at the Walker Art Center. Before joining the Walker, she interned at the National Museum of African Art, Allen Memorial Art Museum, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. She uses language to facilitate diverse entry points to art and its contexts.

artwork view by Jasper Marsalis Soil, concrete, LED parking lot lights, light poles, skid steers

By Alexandra Nicome

The Convex (No Place Is or Ever Was Empty)

Alexandra Nicome writes on Jasper Marsalis’s Stadium, a crater-like outdoor installation commissioned by Midway Contemporary Art and currently on view in the Prospect Park neighborhood of Minneapolis. As Nicome illuminates, the concave space is in fact “conceptually convex,” brimming simultaneously with absence and presence, constructions and deconstructions of Blackness in America.

Learning

By Jadine Collingwood,
Alexandra Nicome, &
Siri Engberg

Human Scale: The Making of Shadows at the Crossroads

Unlike some of the monumental sculptures in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, which strike imposing silhouettes on the downtown skyline, Shadows at the Crossroads, by St. Paul–based artists Ta-coumba T. Aiken, Seitu Jones, and Rosemary Soyini Vinelle Guyton, is made on a decidedly human scale, both in its physical form and its concept. Here, a look behind the scenes at the making of this intimate, locally resonant work.

Learning

By Alexandra Nicome

America and its Afterimage: Jasper Johns, Flags, and Memorial Day

Jasper Johns’s Flags (1967–1968) invites viewers to look at two US flags: one in green, black, and orange, the other in grayscale. After gazing on the upper flag then looking at a dot on the gray flag, viewers should see the time-honored red, white, and blue, but only as an afterimage. “What makes this work so compelling,” writes Walker Interpretation Fellow Alexandra Nicome in a Memorial Day reflection, “is the simultaneous awe and intimacy we get to experience with this shared symbol. In Johns’s print, a commonplace icon only exists in its ‘true’ form when I make it in my mind.”

Learning

By Alexandra Nicome

“I Believe the Secretary”: Women, the Workplace, and Edward Hopper’s Office at Night

“Although Edward Hopper refuses an obvious reading of his painting Office at Night, I found an age-old story, and I take a position: I believe the secretary.” Interpretation Fellow Alexandra Nicome reflects on the 1940 classic’s resonance in this age of intersectional feminism.

Learning

By Alexandra Nicome

To Bend Back: A Look at Glenn Ligon’s Walker Residency 18 Years Later

“The archives are active and flexible—bending, uncovering, and retrieving. They ‘remember,’ seeing the past through a present lens, offering new information, teaching a lesson in empathy.” Interpretation fellow Alexandra Nicome on revisiting Glenn Ligon’s 2000 Walker residency in the Walker Archives.

Learning

By Alexandra Nicome

Source Material: Glenn Ligon on the Residency that Inspired his Coloring Series

Glenn Ligon’s 1999–2000 Walker residency provided the inspiration for the artist’s influential Coloring series. To get context for the project—which included a collaboration with the Teen Art Council, kids’ coloring sessions using vintage Afrocentic coloring books, and a display of books from a black literature archive—interpretation fellow Alexandra Nicome connected with Ligon to discuss the experience.