Twenty-Twelve was a big year for our blogs: we redesigned them, renamed them, and added a few new ones–including Centerpoints and Walker Seen. We also grew traffic. Here’s a look at some of the posts that best took hold across the interwebs.
1. Cats! Cats! Cats! This just in: folks on the Internet like them. So the wild success of our Internet Cat Video Festival shouldn’t have been a surprise, especially given how much traffic our blog posts got. Hands down, our most popular post was our May announcement about the festival, but people also really wanted to know about voting for “best in show,” nominating videos, and details on attending the summer festival, which drew 10,000 people to our lawn the last day of August. Missed it? Here’s a video recap.
2. For Those About to Rock: The annual spring reveal of bands in our annual Rock the Garden concert has become a not-to-be-missed event, and the 2012 edition glued listeners to the radio as the Walker and 89.3 The Current named off the lineup at a live event at the Fitz in St. Paul. Livestreamed on the blogs, we revealed the names as well. Here’s who played our tenth Rock the Garden in June: Howler, tUnE-yArds, Doomtree, Trampled by Turtles, and headliner The Hold Steady. Missed it? Here’s a time-lapse of the entire day.
3. Designing About Design: The designers behind the exhibition Graphic Design: Now In Production share glimpses of what went into the design of the exhibition catalogue on the popular design blog, The Gradient. The show is on view until January 6, 2013, at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and then it moves to the Grand Rapids Art Museum on Feb. 1 and the Contemporary Art Museum Houston on July 20.
4. Puzzling Over Design: Maybe it was the interactive quiz or the Draw-Tippy illustration, but designer Andrea Hyde’s post calling for applicants for the Walker Design Studio’s annual design fellowship really packed ’em in. No word on how many young designers aced the “art test.”
5. Now Screaming: Kim Beom’s video work Yellow Scream (2012), spotted by Walker curators at the Gwangju Biennale, came into the Walker collection late this year. The piece–in which an actor gives a Bob Ross–style demonstration of a painting technique in which brush strokes are accompanied by various kinds of screams, thus altering the makeup of the applied paint–was made available on the Walker Channel for a limited time (Dec. 6-18, 2012), yet still generated enough buzz to be among our most popular posts all year.
More posts that blew up this year:
Insights 2012: Aaron Draplin’s “100 Things I Love About Minneapolis”, The Gradient
The Madness Letters: Friedrich Nietzsche and Béla Tarr, Crosscuts
Lifelike: Installing Robert Therrien’s Giant Folding Table and Chairs, Untitled (Blog)
Insights 2012: Aaron Draplin’s “100 Things I Love About Minneapolis”
Vintage Makeover Ideas for a Downtown Thoroughfare, Centerpoints
“Vote No”: A Walker Family Photo, Centerpoints
Insights 2012: Michael Lejeune (in conversation with Lisa Middag), The Gradient
Beyond Interface: #Opencurating and the Walker’s Digital Initiatives, Media Lab
Negative Space: Mungo Thomson Approaches the Void with New Walker Mural, Untitled (Blog)
Painting as Score: Sarah Crowner on Format, Untitled (Blog)
Related: The Walker’s Most Popular Articles of 2012: Haring, Hodges, and a Giant Folding Chair
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