MINNEAPOLIS, April 28 2015—The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA), and the Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota, will again participate in the Association of Art Museum Directors’ (AAMD) Art Museum Day on May 15, 2015. Art Museum Day emphasizes the essential role that museums play in their communities, highlights the value of visual arts in society, and provides new opportunities for audiences to participate in the wide-ranging programs offered by AAMD member museums. The Walker, MIA and Weisman will offer discounts and other special one-day-only amenities, and invite visitors to share their Art Museum Day experiences on social media with the hashtag #ArtMuseumDay.
Offerings and amenities include:
Walker Art Center
1750 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis
walkerart.org
Gallery hours on Friday, May 15: 11 am–5 pm
In celebration of Art Museum Day all visitors to the Walker Art Center will enjoy free gallery admission.
Selected Exhibitions on View
International Pop
On view through August 29, 2015
Organized by the Walker Art Center, International Pop chronicles the global emergence of Pop art from the 1950s through the early 1970s. While previous exhibitions and prevailing scholarship have primarily focused on the dominance of Pop activity in New York and London during this time, this exhibition examines work from artists across the globe who were confronting many of the same radical developments, laying the foundation for the emergence of an art form that embraced figuration, media strategies, and mechanical processes with a new spirit of urgency and/or exuberance.
This groundbreaking exhibition follows the trajectories of Pop and its critical points of contact with global developments in art such as Nouveau Réalisme (France), Concretism and Neo-Concretism (Brazil), the Art of Things (Argentina), Anti-Art (Japan), Capitalist Realism (Germany), Happenings, and Neo-Dada. As such, the landmark exhibition recaptures the energy and inquisitiveness of this moment in art, expanding the frame of its influence and diversity while reenergizing questions around the true significance, breadth, and definition of Pop art. Created in dialogue with an international array of curators and scholars, International Pop features some 140 works from 14 countries as well as a dedicated film/video program daily in the galleries.
International Pop is organized by the Walker Art Center. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Major support for the exhibition is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation, the Prospect Creek Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Margaret and Angus Wurtele Family Foundation.
Additional support is generously provided by Lewis Baskerville, Judy Dayton, Lyn De Logi, Martha and John Gabbert, the Robert Lehman Foundation, the Peyton Family Foundation, Donna and Jim Pohlad, Robert and Rebecca Pohlad, Judith and Stephen Shank, Mike and Elizabeth Sweeney, Marge and Irv Weiser, Annette and John Whaley, and Audrey and Zygi Wilf. Support for the exhibition catalogue is provided by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of Walker Art Center publications.
Art at the Center: 75 Years of Walker Collections
On view through December 31, 2016
In 2015, the Walker celebrates the 75th anniversary of its founding as a public art center dedicated to presenting and collecting the art of our times. Curated by the Walker’s executive director Olga Viso and guest curator Joan Rothfuss, the exhibition looks at 75 years of collecting at the Walker—a history distinguished not only by bold and often risk-taking choices but also acquisitions that have consistently breached the boundaries of media or disciplines. The exhibition foregrounds many of these prescient choices.
On view for a two-year period will be many iconic works from the collection, including Edward Hopper’s Office at Night (1940), Franz Marc’s The Large Blue Horses (1911), Chuck Close’s Big Self-Portrait (1967–1968), Yves Klein’s Mondo Cane Shroud (1961), and others.
Another exhibition marking the occasion of the Walker’s 75th anniversary, this presentation focuses on the significant impact that gifts of art have made on the collection through its history. While the Walker has always made important purchases of art, often acquiring the work of artists early in their careers, this activity alone could not have built the museum’s collection into the preeminent repository of contemporary art that it is today.
75 Gifts for 75 Years
On view through July 26, 2015
75 Gifts for 75 Years features recent outright and/or promised gifts in the areas of painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, video, and prints. Some of these include works by artists such as Siah Armajani, Claes Oldenburg, and Kara Walker, which help to build on the Walker’s existing areas of strength; others fill historical gaps, such as examples by Philip Guston, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Zilia Sánchez. Established artists who are newly represented in the Walker’s collection include Marlene Dumas, Wade Guyton, and Luc Tuymans. Still other donations have introduced younger artists, such as Walead Beshty, Dianna Molzan, Tauba Auerbach, and Zak Prekop, who have received significant critical attention in recent years.
This exhibition highlights recent gifts and affirms the tremendous impact that donors—from across generations, from the Twin Cities and around the globe—continue to have on shaping the breadth and quality of the Walker’s singular collection.
Liz Deschenes: Gallery 7
On view through November 22, 2015
Since the early 1990s, Liz Deschenes has produced a singular and influential body of work that has done much to advance photography’s material potential and critical scope. Making use of the medium’s most elemental aspects, namely paper, light, and chemicals, she has recently worked without a camera to produce mirrored photograms that reflect viewers’ movements in time and space. Her carefully calibrated installations of these pieces have probed disparate histories of image production, abstraction, and exhibition-making while also responding to a given site’s unique features. For this yearlong exhibition—the artist’s first solo presentation at an American museum—Deschenes has produced a new body of work, reconfiguring the space of the Walker’s seventh-floor gallery with a photographic intervention.
Liz Deschenes: Gallery 7 is organized by the Walker Art Center. The exhibition is made possible by generous support from Gayle and Mike Ahearn, Lisa and Pat Denzer, Linda and Larry Perlman, and Laura Taft.
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
2400 Third Avenue South, Minneapolis
artsmia.org
Museum hours on Friday, May 15: 10 am–9 pm
In celebration of Museum Day and the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s 100th Birthday Year, the MIA will unveil its second surprise “Masterpiece in Focus” painting, on loan from one of Europe’s finest art museums. The artwork is part of an unprecedented set of surprise exhibitions presenting three of the world’s most influential paintings for the enjoyment of Minnesotans.
On view for a limited time. Free admission, as always.
Major Sponsors for “Masterpiece in Focus”: Robins Kaplan LLP, BMO Harris Bank MIA 100th Birthday Year Presented by: Best Buy Co., Inc., Friends of the Institute, U.S. Bank
Selected Exhibitions on View
100+: A Photograph For Every Year of the MIA
On view through October 18, 2015
100+: A Photograph For Every Year of the MIA celebrates the MIA’s Birthday Year with photographs from every year since the museum’s founding, drawing from the MIA’s diverse Photography collection of 12,000 images and more than 800 artists.
In the installation, iconic artists’ works touch on pivotal moments in history and situations of their time and include, among many, Ansel Adams’ 1926 The Face of Half Dome; a migratory worker from 1940 by Dorothea Lange; Richard Avedon’s portrait of Dwight Eisenhower from 1964; the infamous twin girls by Diane Arbus from 1970; and Alec Soth’s CF#1, 2013 (2014).
Organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
American Modernism: Selections from the Kunin Collection
On view through December 6, 2015
One of the most important private collections of American painting from the first half of the 20th century, the Myron Kunin collection is exhibited on a long-term long to the MIA in American Modernism: Selections from the Kunin Collection of American Art.
The artworks span the diverse artistic styles and movements of the early 20th century, from abstraction to American realism. The exhibition is a story of American art—featuring more than 80 works, including signature paintings by Reginald Marsh, Marsden Harley, Stuart Davis, Walt Kuhn, and Paul Cadmus, which have rarely been seen on public view.
Organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
Weisman Art Museum
333 East River Road, Minneapolis
wam.umn.edu
Gallery & shop hours on Friday, May 15: 10 am–5 pm
The Weisman Art Museum (WAM) at the University of Minnesota will offer a 10% discount in the WAM Shop to all visitors.
Free admission every day.
Selected Exhibitions on View
Artful Giving: Lillian (Babe) and Julius Davis
February 28 through August 9, 2015
Lillian (Babe) and Julius E. Davis, the namesake donors of a WAM collection gallery, were supporters of the Weisman on many levels. In addition to contributing the funds for the gallery space, they also donated their time and advice (Babe was a founding member of WAM’s Colleagues Advisory Board) and made regular gifts of art to WAM’s collection. A selection of the artwork given to WAM by Babe and Julius over the years is now on view in the Edith Carlson Gallery. The selection of works on view was chosen from all of the Davis family’s gifts to WAM, totaling more than eighty-eight and gifted between the years of 1975 and 2013. The works on view are meant to offer a glimpse of the Davises’ collecting sensibilities. Keenly interested in adventurous and experimental contemporary art, the couple over the years built a remarkable collection including works from artists Chuck Close, Jean Dubuffet, Helen Frankenthaler, Sol LeWitt, Louise Nevelson, Claes Oldenburg, and Lucas Samaras.
Big Bridges
February 28 through December 6, 2015
They are emblems of achievement and passage to the other side. Big bridges have been making their mark on cityscapes through the ages. In the Twin Cities, our unique location on the gorge of the Mississippi River makes our bridges as majestic as they are vital. Whether supported from below or suspended from above, they are important elements in our visual world and integral to our livelihood. And yet our bridges are wearing out and in need of attention. The Target Studio for Creative Collaboration will address the challenge of maintaining the structural—and sculptural—quality of our big bridges in exhibitions and programs. Big Bridges invites artists, designers, engineers, and the University and larger community to engage in a creative dialogue establishing the expectations, possibilities, and aspirations for the preservation and replacement of our Mississippi River bridges.