Sites of Invention: 13 Interdisciplinary Exhibitions at the Walker

For decades, the Walker’s world-renowned collections and commissions have featured generations of artists whose works expand the possibilities of art through the merging of disciplines, while its exhibition program has served as a laboratory for artists working outside traditional media or who are combining practices to create hybrid art forms. In 1971, a pivotal moment in the museum’s history, the Walker opened its new building designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes. The architecture of these new galleries—a spiraling series of large, connected rectangles free of structural columns that might impede sightlines—allowed for a new flexibility in the way spaces could be used and experienced by artists and audiences alike.

Among the first exhibitions to be presented in these inaugural years were a range of projects that blurred the boundaries between art forms. In 1972, a retrospective on the work of Arte Povera artist Mario Merz also served as the backdrop for Event #32, an important piece by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, which was performed live in the galleries alongside Merz’s large-scale sculptures. Exciting and contemporary, this coexistence of art, performance, and audience in the space of the museum gallery reflected ways that artists since the late 1950s had begun to think more freely about the possibility of intertwining areas of artistic practice. For curators, this fusion became a template for exhibitions that would follow, in which artistic disciplines were given license to blend within the space of the gallery itself. Here, performances, film, and video were often presented side-by-side and in dialogue with objects and viewers.

This sampling of key interdisciplinary exhibitions and projects at the Walker from the 1980s to the present—from Tokyo: Form and Spirit to Merce Cunningham: Common Time—highlights and reflects on a number of these landmark shows. Today, as we continue to follow artists who are increasingly working across or within multiple disciplines, this history can provide important context as to how an exhibition can be a site of invention for artists, with potential to come to life in unexpected ways for audiences.

This text was compiled by Siri Engberg, senior curator, Visual Arts, and Allie Tepper, interdisciplinary fellow; with Jill Vuchetich, archivist, and Barb Economon, visual resources specialist.

Tokyo: Form and Spirit
Curator: Mildred Friedman
Walker Art Center, April 20–July 20, 1986
Traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; IBM Gallery of Science and Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Publication: Friedman, Mildred, ed. Tokyo: Form and Spirit. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1986.

Tokyo: Form and Spirit (1986) was a major Walker exhibition, organized in association with Japan House Gallery, New York, that looked at historical and contemporary aspects of life in Japan. The exhibition encompassed performance, architecture, design, and visual art, exploring the inventiveness and continuity of Japanese culture from the Edo period (1603–1868) to the present. The presentation was divided into seven sections—Walking, Living, Working, Playing, Performing, Reflecting, Spirit—each contrasting the old with the new and staged within installations conceived by prominent architects and designers. As part of the exhibition, a three-month performing arts series entitled Tokyo Arts Festival, showcased the work of many musicians, dancer, theater artists. The festival included a New Music series with performances by experimental Japanese musicians Ushio Torikai and Mamory Fujieda, and the ARK Ensemble of Tokyo; a Kubuki-style dance performance by dancers Suzushi and Suzuetsu Hanayagi; a multimedia event entitled The Movieteller by the poet and performer Walter Lew, including dance, music, and film; and performances by the contemporary Japanese dance group Sankai Juku, and the Kita Noh Theater Company of Tokyo, among many other events.