Northern Spark @ Walker Art Center
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Open Today at 10:00 AM
Free Event

Northern Spark @ Walker Art Center

The lights stay on and the galleries remain open for Northern Spark, the annual city-wide dusk-to-dawn festival. Join us for a range of indoor and outdoor activities to engage curious all-night adventurers.

The Garden Café by D’Amico and a range of food trucks stationed next to Open Field—AZ Canteen, A Cupcake Social, and Gastro Truck—provide fuel throughout the night.

Northern Spark is presented by Northern Lights.mn, a nonprofit arts organization whose mission is to transform our sense of what’s possible in public space.

Free Exhibitions

Experience a 24-hour screening of a tour de force cinematic work The Clock by Christian Marclay, and get a late-night glimpse of two of the Walker’s major exhibitions, featuring paintings, drawings, sculpture, installations, video, and more. Free gallery admission all night.

Old School Art School

Saturday, 9 pm–Sunday, 2 am
Cargill Lounge

Artists from the Atelier Studio Program of Fine Art bring American artist Edward Hopper’s painting Office at Night to life as they sketch from a tableau with live models.

Graffiti Angel in Sophronia/a Netprov

Saturday, 9 pm–Sunday, 6 am
Level 8 Terrace
(In the event of rain, event will move to the Medtronic Gallery.)

In his novel Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino writes: “The city of Sophronia is made up of two half-cities, in one there is a great roller coaster with its steep humps, the carousel, the Ferris wheel, the death-ride with crouching motorcyclists, and the big top. The other half-city is of stone, with the bank, the factories, the palaces, the slaughterhouse, the school, and all the rest. One of the half-cities is permanent, the other is temporary. …”

Inspired by Calvino’s imaginary cities, Graffiti Angel in Sophronia is an interactive multimedia work by Joellyn Rock, Kathy McTavish, and Rob Wittig that mixes video, images, music, and text to create a second Sophronia. Improvising on audience suggestions, a team of Netprov (networked improv narrative) writers weave in stories of the half-cities.

Visitors can contribute on Twitter at #sophroniatwo or learn more at sophroniatwo.com. Copresented with Northern Lights.MN.

Accordion with Dan Newton

Saturday, 10–11 pm
Open Field
(In the event of rain, event will move to the Bazinet Garden Lobby.)

Dan Newton’s fresh approach to the much-maligned squeeze-box and his mind-boggling repertoire of both original and traditional material will change the minds of the most hardened accordion skeptics. Drawing influences from such sources as French musette, gypsy swing, Cajun, jug band, Tex-Mex, and cumbia, he calls this global gumbo “ethnoclectic” music.

Poetry Tarot

Saturday, 10 pm–Sunday, 2 am
Garden Terrace Room

Take a moment’s respite for a unique kind of poetry “reading.” A tribe of writers affiliated with the Minneapolis-based literary cohort Rain Taxi Review of Books will lay out cards containing themes, images, and questions (instead of the traditional Tarot), then will write—on the spot—a poem for you based on the results. You’ll emerge from this reverie with a personalized poetry fortune to take with you on the rest of your Northern Spark journey and beyond.

Drawing NIGHTclub

Saturday, 9 pm–Sunday, 2 am
Open Field
(In the event of rain, event will move to the Star Tribune Foundation Art Lab.)

Join local artists for this nocturnal round of social art-making that explores collaborative drawing activities.

Glow Games

Saturday, 9 pm–Sunday, 4 am
Open Field
(In the event of rain, Glow Games will be canceled.)

Get energized by a friendly round of glow-in-the dark volleyball.