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Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis, Minnesota is a contemporary art center that is
considered to be one of the top five museums in the country for
modern art, began in 1879 by lumberman Thomas Barlow Walker and he
would formally establish in 1927 on its present locale. It would
become the first public art gallery in the upper Midwest, right
across from the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden that opened in 1988 and
the Cowles Conservatory; undergoing a renovation in April 2005. The
museum concentrates on the modern artworks that began in the 1940s,
when a gift from Mrs. Gilbert Walker would create a marvelous
acquisition of works by modern day artists and include sculptures
created by Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti and Henry Moore, with
many others, too numerous to name here. As the years slowly passed,
the museum would acquire many more important and significant works
of art, with the latest expansion doubling the size of the exhibit
space and includes indoors and outdoors installations. One of the
more significant changes was the addition of a "town square" type of
space that would encourage visitors to interact with others there
for informal conversations, community programs and interactive
learning. It has grown to be internationally recognized as a unique
model of multidisciplinary arts and a national leader for its
outstanding and innovative approaches to audience engagement. The
center is located on 17 acres that contains both parks and
buildings, with the north wing opening in 1971 and designed by
Edward Larrabee Barnes. The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden would be a
marvelous collaboration between the center and the city's parks and
recreation board and is located on the west side of the campus.
Their visual arts program is a wonderful blend of thematic, group,
historical, contemporary, monographic and media-specific shows and
has been the first major museum exposure for many budding artists
that included, Kara Walker, Joseph Cornell, Mario Merz, Frank Gehry
and Julie Mehretu, among others. Many of the artists showing here
has made a splendid relationship with the center and these include;
Robert Gober, Claes Oldenburg, Matthew Barney, Jasper Johns,
Ellsworth Kelly and Sherrie Levine. The center has become such a
magnificent venue for artists and modern art that they have begun to
expand their horizons and started collecting Viennese Actionism,
Italian Arte Povera, Fluxus and Japanese Gutai, that was started in
the 1950s and 1960s, and have become popular since they aren't
located in too many museums today. The center presents the
performing arts, film and video venues, designs, new media and
education and community programs to encourage the community to
become more involved so they can gain a better understanding and
appreciation of this outstanding facility.
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