Sensory Friendly Sunday is a monthly event designed for kids, teens, and adults with sensory-processing differences, autism spectrum disorder, or developmental disabilities. The galleries will be closed to the general public, allowing visitors to enjoy the museum in a calm environment with accommodations such as quiet spaces, fidgets, and sunglasses available. Experience a selection of current exhibitions, make art, or watch a short film. All friends and family members are welcome.
In February, explore the exhibitions This Must Be the Place: Inside the Walker’s Collection, Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon, and Collection in Focus: Banu Cennetoğlu.
To support the health and safety of visitors at increased risk for COVID-19, masks are required at Sensory Friendly Sunday for visitors over age 2. Accommodations are available if someone in your party is unable to tolerate masking. Please email access@walkerart.org or call 612-375-7561 for more information.
This program was created in consultation with the Autism Society of Minnesota (AuSM) and the University of Minnesota’s Occupational Therapy Program.
Admission Tickets
While walk-ins are welcome, we encourage you to reserve your space ahead of time. Sensory Friendly Sunday is typically less busy 8–9:30 am, and busier 9:30–11 am.
Activity Information
Making Maps Art-Making Activity, 8 am–11 am
Maps show a place in the real world, perhaps a neighborhood or a building. Maps help us know where to go, and what we’ll find when we get there. Join multidisciplinary artist Alison Bergblom Johnson in making maps of places that matter to you.
Make a Topioscope Art-Making Activity, 8 am–11 am
Take a fresh look at your surroundings and explore the objects and landscapes around you from a new perspective. Create a multiplied, geometric reflection of what you observe. For inspiration, visit Yayoi Kusama’s Passing Winter in This Must Be the Place, the collection exhibition. Notice how Kusama and other artists use mirrors to transform reflections into works of art.
Short Film: Ptak by Gerhard Funk, 8 am–11 am
The short animated film Ptak explores the question “Where do birds really come from?” The film lasts 6 1/2 minutes, and will loop between 8–11 am. This is a relaxed screening with sound reduced. Visitors are free to come and go, move, and make themselves comfortable in the space.
Accessibility, Content, and Sensory Notes
The short film will be captioned in English.
Content note: The exhibition Collection in Focus: Banu Cennetoğlu contains mature content.
Sensory note: The exhibition This Must Be the Place: Inside the Walker’s Collection includes two video rooms with reduced light levels. Some videos include flashing, flickering, or disorienting visual effects and sound that changes in volume, pitch, and tone. The exhibition Collection in Focus: Banu Cennetoğlu includes flickering effects and sudden changes in volume and pitch.
To prepare for your visit, check out this Social Narrative
For more information about accessibility visit our Access page.
For more information about accessibility, visit our Access page.
For questions on accessibility, or to request additional accommodations, call 612-375-7564 or email access@walkerart.org.
Bio
Alison Bergblom Johnson’s work crosses media and genre, exploring disability, identity, and joy. She collaborates with community care and art organizations, from small grassroots endeavors to very large, established institutions. Her creative practice includes essays, collage, and storytelling. She is an artist, a writer, a performer, an artist organizer, a consultant, and a teaching artist.