Target Free Thursday Nights
September 6, 13, 20, & 27
Start the weekend early with a healthy dose of art gazing and pop-up activities, all for free. Switch up your routine this fall with Target Free Thursday Nights from 5 to 9 pm.
In the Art Lab the Little Earth Arts Collective programmed button-making and stop-motion animation activities for the public to interact with before the film.
Drawing Workshops
Thursdays, September 6, October 4, November 1
Walker Art Center, 6–8 pm
Get inspired by Siah Armajani: Follow This Line and the newly renovated Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge, then create your own drawings. All art materials will be provided for these free, in-gallery workshops. Led by architect Amber Sausen.
Citizenship Series: Filling the Void
Thursday, September 13, 6 pm
Gallery 1
Carey Young’s Declared Void II (2013) demands our attention now, more than ever. Join us as local artists step inside the piece to explore themes of immigration, citizenship, and nationalism through performance and discussion.
Participants include Pedro Pablo Lander, Meena Mangalvedhekar, Nimo Farah, and Mustafa Jumale. An introduction by Michele McKenzie, J.D., Deputy Director of The Advocates for Human Rights in Minnesota.
Artist Talk: Siah Armajani
Thursday, September 20, 6:30 pm
Walker Cinema
Join artist Siah Armajani in conversation with exhibition co-curator Victoria Sung for an insightful and inspiring conversation about the artist’s life, work, and the new exhibition Siah Armajani: Follow This Line.
Free tickets available from 5:30 pm at the Main Lobby Desk.
Gallery Tours: Siah Armajani
Thursdays, September 20, October 11, and November 8
Walker Art Center, 6 pm, Free
Dive deep into Siah Armajani: Follow This Line with specialized tours of the exhibition. Each tour expands up on the prolific career and life of this Minnesota-based artist. Exhibition co-curator Victoria Sung leads the October 11 tour.
FREE FILMS
Sky Hopinka: The Centers of Somewhere
Screening and Artist Talk
Thursday, September 13, 7 pm
Walker Cinema, Free
Milwaukee-based filmmaker Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk/Pechanga) focuses on the interconnections between his indigenous homeland, language, and identity, weaving family traditions together with a new generation’s perspective. Often ethnographic in tone, Hopinka’s rigorously composed and thickly layered films create maps of dreams and memories, pushing against personal boundaries and making cultural connections.
Following a screening of his short films, Hopinka will discuss his practice and recent Artist Op-Ed The Centers of Somewhere with Bentson Archivist Ruth Hodgins and Walker Reader Managing Editor Paul Schmelzer.
After the discussion, there will be a free drinks reception from 9-10pm with Sky at Bockley Gallery, where there is a three-channel installation of his work Fainting Spells.
OTHER FREE EVENTS
Doug Ashford and Sam Gould *CANCELLED*
Friday, September 14, 6:30 pm
Cowles Pavilion, Free
What is the function of abstract art in our so-called “post-truth” moment? Join artist and writer Doug Ashford and artist Sam Gould for a conversation under the canopy of Daniel Buren’s Sail/Canvas – Canvas/Sail (1975/2018). They’ll consider the potential of abstraction to inspire a range of responses that can challenge the status quo: from personal introspection and reevaluation to the covert exchange of political messages.
Ashford is a teacher, artist, and writer. From 1982 to 1996 Ashford worked with the artist collective Group Material, which has produced 40 exhibitions and public projects internationally. His practice is described in Who Cares (Creative Time, 2006), a featuring a series of interviews with Ashford on public expression, beauty, and ethics.
An artist, writer, and activist, Gould cofounded artist collective Red76. Interested in ideas about publication, his work focuses on sociality, education, and encountering the political within daily life. His most current platform, Beyond Repair, functions as a site of questioning within the 9th Ward of Minneapolis.
*This event has now been cancelled.
Sohrab Mohebbi and Frances Stark
Wednesday, September 26, 6:30 pm
Cowles Pavilion, Free
Artist Frances Stark and curator Sohrab Mohebbi reflect on the former’s text The Architect and the Housewife underneath Daniel Buren’s colorful paintings. Stark responded to Buren’s 1971 essay The Function of the Studio, disputing his claim that the artist’s studio is an idealized place. In doing so, she strives to deconstruct the sanctity of that space and instead reveal it as a site of contingency and doubt.
Mohebbi is currently the curator at the SculptureCenter in New York and was previously associate curator at REDCAT. In 2012, he received an Arts Writers grant from Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation for the blog Presence Documents. He is a contributing editor at Bidoun Magazine, and his writings have been published in Artforum, Art Agenda, and Modern Painters, among others.
Stark’s drawings, collages, videos, performances, and paintings have been extensively exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide. In 2015, Stark’s sprawling mid-career survey, UH-OH: Frances Stark 1991–2015, opened at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Stark’s work has been included in prominent exhibitions such as the 2013 Carnegie International, the 2011 Venice Biennale, and the 2008 and 2017 Whitney Biennials
Siah Armajani: Follow This Line
*Opens September 8*
Galleries 4, 5, 6 and 7
Siah Armajani: Follow This Line is the first comprehensive US retrospective devoted to the work of Minneapolis-based artist Siah Armajani. Born in Tehran in 1939, Armajani moved to Minnesota in 1960 to attend Macalester College in St. Paul. He has lived and worked in the Twin Cities ever since, while exhibiting internationally.
Armajani is best known today for his works of public art—bridges, gazebos, gardens, reading rooms—sited across the United States and Europe. Near the Walker, the artist’s landmark 375-foot Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge connects Loring Park to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. This groundbreaking exhibition spans six decades of the artist’s studio practice and engages a range of references—from Persian calligraphy to the manifesto, letter, and talisman; from poetry to mathematical equations and computer programming; from the Abstract Expressionist canvas to the vernacular architecture of rural America, Bauhaus design, and Russian Constructivism.
Siah Armajani: Follow This Line is co-organized by the Walker Art Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The Way Things Go
Gallery C
Scavenged, arranged, and transformed. The artworks in this exhibition bring everyday objects into the museum—and in doing so, reveal a process by which bits of life become art. Here, a selection of works drawn from the Walker’s collection encourages us to find the poetry in the mundane by focusing on artists’ experiments with humble materials.
I am you, you are too
Galleries 1, 2, 3 and D
At a time of heightened uncertainty, division, and geopolitical tensions, I am you, you are too foregrounds works from the Walker’s collections that explore contemporary life through themes of citizenship and belonging, borders and barriers, and ways in which everyday life informs our understanding of ourselves.
Source Material
Best Buy Aperture passage
Glenn Ligon at the Walker presents artwork and ephemera from the artist’s residency at the Walker Art Center 1999-2000. Ligon completed three projects in Minneapolis: he organized an interactive exhibition with the Walker Art Center Teen Arts Council 1999-2000 cohort, created display of books from the Archie Givens Collection of African American Literature, and led series of coloring workshops with daycare-age children in Minneapolis.
Materials from the Walker Art Center Archives and Library demonstrate the lasting impact of the residency on the artist and the Walker community.