On June 20, the Walker Art Center will open This Must Be the Place, the first significant reinstallation of works from the institution’s exceptional and growing collection in over five years. The Walker’s collection features more than 16,000 objects, including works by modern art icons and some of the most influential and celebrated artists of today. In recent years, the Walker has continued to expand its holdings with works by women artists, BIPOC artists, artists working in new media and performance arts, and artists from or with ties to Minnesota. This Must Be the Place reintroduces audiences to the Walker’s evolving collection, presenting beloved, touchstone works alongside lesser known but equally important objects as well as new acquisitions. Through new interpretative materials, the installation offers fresh insight into the development of the collection and creates new pathways for storytelling and community engagement.
This Must Be the Place will remain on view through April 29, 2029, with works periodically rotated to capture new and dynamic juxtapositions, highlight new acquisitions, and share new ideas and artistic innovations. It is curated by Henriette Huldisch, Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs; with support from Siri Engberg, Senior Curator and Director, Visual Arts; Taylor Jasper, Assistant Curator, Visual Arts; and Laurel Rand-Lewis, Curatorial Fellow, Visual Arts.
This Must Be the Place is loosely organized around the many aspects that define and contribute to the idea of “home,” whether experiences of family and community, human-made and natural environments, or broader emotional and physiological expressions. The installation unfolds across three main galleries, with each dedicated to a different theme:
- “Kith and Kin” explores representation of friends, family, and community, and includes, among others works, paintings by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Jennifer Packer, and Jiab Prachakul; a sculptural installation by Cameron Downey; and photographs by Catherine Opie and Wing Young Huie. The gallery also features a sub-section that explores artist networks, including a selection of portraits of artists by artists such as Rirkrit Tiravanija by Elizabeth Peyton and Lee Lozano by Hollis Frampton.
- “The City” examines urban and built environments with works such as Yuji Agematsu’s zip 4/1-30/2008 (2008); Analog (2004) by Mark Bradford; Transcending: The New International (2003) by Julie Mehretu; and Kahlil Robert Irving’s Streetview | Pool & Paper (Underground star ways) (2023), which was acquired from the artist’s solo exhibition at the Walker last year. One section is dedicated to works that consider the street as a site of social activation and protest, featuring artists Song Dong, Kerry James Marshall, and Lorraine O’Grady, among others.
- “The Land” reflects on the US landscape and forms of settlement and displacement through works by Jim Denomie, Rashid Johnson, Ana Mendieta, Alison Saar, and Ursula von Rydingsvard, among others. Within this gallery, a focus area, titled “Land, Light, Water, Space,” presents a group of abstract and minimalist works that engage with modes of perception, including those by Senga Nengudi, Teresita Fernández, Robert Irwin, Marie Watt, and others.
- Additionally, “interlude” spaces highlight key works, such as Franz Marc’s Die grossen blauen Pferde (The Large Blue Horses) (1911) and Edward Hopper’s Office at Night (1940) and spotlight core aspects of the collection.
As part of this major reinstallation, the Walker is creating new interpretative materials guided, in part, by feedback gathered from community members through surveys and group dialogues during the run of the exhibition Make Sense of This (2023). Make Sense of This is an exploratory presentation organized in four chapters unfolding over a period of fifteen months. Each new rotation had a different theme and featured a group of works drawn from the Walker’s collection. With each chapter, visitors were invited to respond to a set of questions about the artworks, the gallery texts, and content preferences. A series of in-person workshops with invited groups were also held in the space. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, visitors’ accumulating responses could be seen in a real-time display, revealing a composite view of ideas, opinions, and preferences.
As of mid-January 2024, the Walker received more than 28,000 unique responses to its survey, capturing its community’s desire to engage with content questions. While responses were highly divergent, visitors broadly indicated that interpretative material in the galleries is most effective when it is concise, written in an accessible and clear language, includes key information about the artwork and/or artist, and features questions and prompts that encourage individual thinking and group discussion. In response to an interest in additional behind-the-scenes content and personal reflections from curators and other Walker team members, the Walker is creating additional audio and visual content for the Bloomberg Connects app, readily accessible in the galleries via QR codes. Lastly, visitors expressed an interest in presentations that engage with critical social and political issues. Community desire to experience artworks that speak to issues of daily importance informed some of the themes in the collection reinstallation, highlighting how the growth of the Walker’s holdings relates to topical subjects. The Walker will also offer interpretative material in English, Spanish, Somali, and Hmong—the four most commonly spoken languages in the Twin Cities.
“The reinstallation of the Walker’s collection is grounded in our vision to create a sense of pride and ownership among our local communities. We see the Walker collection as belonging to our local audiences, and we have been acquiring works by a diverse group of artists, from our region and across the country and globe who engage with social and political issues and expand the possibilities of art,” said Henriette Huldisch, the Walker’s Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs. “The interpretative material allows space for new storytelling and deep conversations. Together, the installation and supporting materials foster meaningful connections with the works on view and make the collection presentation a must-see, recurring anchor to the Walker experience.”
MOTION CAPTURE AT THE WALKER
As a prelude to This Must Be the Place, the Walker will open Motion Capture on February 29, 2024. This focus exhibition features a selection of works added to the Walker’s collection since 2020 and explores the myriad ways that artists make performance and dance central to their work in video, film, painting, sculpture, and printmaking. The Walker has long been at the forefront of collecting works of performance art and Motion Capture offers a singular opportunity to explore how this aspect of the Walker’s collecting is manifest in works across discipline.
Borrowing its title from the imaging technique that digitally registers motion, the presentation explores the unexpected effects that can result when different art forms converge. Artists in this exhibition translate dance into 3D animations, sculptures, quilted collages, and other forms, manipulating time and perception in the process. At the heart of the show is the video installation We Are in Hell When We Hurt Each Other (2020) by artist Jacolby Satterwhite, who is known for his otherworldly environments imagined through performance, painting, sculpture, and animation. Other works in the exhibition include deader than dead (2020) by Ligia Lewis, which captures the artist’s first dance created for the camera, Jimmy Robert’s folded paper sculpture Untitled (Plié IV) (2020), which is inspired by a ballet exercise, and Sabrina Gschwandtner’s Cinema Sanctuary Study 2 (2019) composed of quilted strips of celluloid from an 1897 film by pioneering French film director Alice Guy- Blaché. The exhibition will remain on view through August 25, 2024.
ABOUT THE WALKER ART CENTER
The Walker Art Center is a renowned multidisciplinary arts institution that presents, collects, and supports the creation of groundbreaking work across the visual and performing arts, moving image, and design. Guided by the belief that art has the power to bring joy and solace and the ability to unite people through dialogue and shared experiences, the Walker engages communities through a dynamic array of exhibitions, performances, events, and initiatives. Its multiacre campus includes 65,000 sq. ft. of exhibition space, the state-of-the-art McGuire Theater and Walker Cinema, and ample green space that connects with the adjoining Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The Garden, a partnership with the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board, is one of the first urban sculpture parks of its kind in the United States and home to the beloved Twin Cities landmark Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Recognized for its ambitious program and growing collection of more than 15,500 works, the Walker embraces emerging art forms and amplifies the work of artists from the Twin Cities and from across the country and the globe. Its broad spectrum of offerings makes it a lively and welcoming hub for artistic expression, creative innovation, and community connection.