Today at the Walker Art Center

Arty Pants: Your Tuesday Playdate : For kids ages 3-5 and adults : Family Program

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:00:00 GMT

What do hip kids and their (possibly) cooler parents do to spark creativity? Attend Arty Pants: Your Tuesday Playdate, featuring activities for adults and youngsters ages 3-5. Join us each month on the second and fourth Tuesdays for art projects, films, gallery activities, and story time. Free with gallery admission; Walker members and kids ages 12 and under are always free.

JANUARY 12 and 26; FEBRUARY 9 and 23
During the January and February programs, guests can visit the new exhibition Event Horizon to take part in a fresh series of interactive Arty Pants activities. Emulate artists practices as you and your tot create artwork together, watch films, listen to stories, and more.

Art-making Activities
Star Tribune Foundation Art Lab
Join us each week for a new art activity that will get you and your child learning, playing, and creating.

January 12: Shiny Shapes
January 26: Take a Chance
February 9: Creative Clutter
February 23: Messy Marvels

Film: Fishing with Sam, directed by Atle Solberg Blakseth
U.S. Bank Orientation Lounge
In this short film from Norway, some penguins are troubling the other Arctic creatures. Can they get along? Or will it be survival of the fittest?

Tour Adventure: Art Explorer
Event Horizon, Galleries 1, 2, and 3
Head off to the galleries with a hands-on activity pack that helps you and your youngster investigate works of art.

Story Time: The Book That Eats People by John Perry and Mark Fearing
Cargill Lounge
Its a story about a book that will make you laugh. Be careful thoughif you hear rumble sounds you might want to stop reading. This book is known to eat people.

Zhao Liang: Heavy Sleepers : Exhibition

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:00:00 GMT

An acute exposition of social realities in China, Zhaos large-scale video environment depicts the interior of a dormitory for construction workers. One side of the space shows sleeping men; the other, a row of empty beds. Walking through, the visitor is immersed in simple scenes illustrating the sacrifices made by Chinas laborers, as the slow, unyielding camera pan reveals telling personal details. Shot in Beijing during the fast-paced construction leading up to the 2008 Olympics, the empty beds raise the question of whether the men have gone back to work, or finally returned home.

Through video, photography, and documentary film, Zhao (born in 1971) examines the oppositional tensions in contemporary China: rural and urban realities, rapid progress and nostalgia, the nature of politics and the beauty of the natural world. He clearly connects with the underprivileged, whom he considers to be the engine of society, and homes in on everyday aspects of life ignored by public institutions. His work was previously seen at the Walker in the 2003 exhibition How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age.

Curator: Sheryl Mousley

Benches & Binoculars : Exhibition

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:00:00 GMT

A reminder that all art was at one time contemporary, this exhibition is inspired both by the Walker's history and the serendipity with which works come together in its storage vaults. More than 75 masterpieces, new discoveries, and notable oddities from the Walker collection crowd the gallery walls, with seating and binoculars provided so that visitors can conduct their own close-up investigations of individual works.

Contrasting with the minimalist tendencies in the galleries of many contemporary arts organizations, the salon-style installation refers to the 19th- and early 20th-century gallery practices that lumber magnate T.B. Walker emulated in displayed his personal collection. The result is a lively and unconventional narrative of recent art history, and a testament to changing tastes over time.

Artists whose work is on view include Milton Avery, Max Beckmann, Chuck Close, John Currin, Marsden Hartley, David Hockney, Edward Hopper, Sherrie Levine, Franz Marc, Alice Neel, Georgia OKeeffe, and Andy Warhol.

Curators: Darsie Alexander and Elizabeth Carpenter

Event Horizon : Exhibition

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Highlights and hidden secrets of the Walkers contemporary art collections are presented in a lively sequence of rotations that unfold throughout the exhibitions run. Inspired by the idea of the event horizon, a term that describes the edge of observable space, this exhibition threads together major themes and developments in contemporary art, while showcasing works in the context of the events that produced them. In changing over time, it reflects the many voices, perspectives, and programs advanced by the Walker over the past half-century, while acknowledging the continual evolution of art collections as works are added to the mix.

In addition to showing the Walkers remarkable holdings of postwar art, from avant-garde film of the 1960s to newly created environmental works, the Event Horizon galleries serve as sites for performances, public dialogues, and screeningsall significant aspects of the art of today.

The exhibition includes more than 80 works, including pieces by Joseph Beuys, Vija Celmins, Joseph Cornell, Olafur Elisasson, Cao Fei, Thomas Hirschhorn, Andreas Gursky, Mike Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, George Segal, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, and Kara Walker.

Curators: Darsie Alexander and Elizabeth Carpenter, with Philip Bither, Sheryl Mousley, and Sarah Schultz

Haegue Yang: Integrity of the Insider : Exhibition

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:00:00 GMT

From mundane objects and materials such as venetian blinds, theatrical and decorative lights, infrared heaters, scent emitters, and fans, Haegue Yang creates complex and nuanced installations that are informed by poetry, politics, and human emotions. This solo exhibition, Yangs first in a U.S. museum, features a major installation, Yearning Melancholy Red, which the Walker co-commissioned with REDCAT, Los Angeles, as well as photos, videos, and sculptures.

Born in 1971, Yang lives and works in Berlin and Seoul. She represented the Republic of Korea in the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, and recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Sala Rekalde, Bilbao; REDCAT, Los Angeles; and Portikus, Frankfurt. She also participated in the 2006 Sao Paulo Biennial; the 55th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2008); and the 2008 Turin Triennale. The Walkers 2007 exhibition Brave New Worlds was Yangs first U.S. exhibition.

Curator: Doryun Chong

Burrowing Inward: Short Films by Jacques Drouin and Guy Maddin : Screenings from the Collection

Tue, 1 Sep 2009 05:00:00 GMT

This selection of works from the Walkers Ruben/Bentson Film and Video Study Collection showcases two short pieces about artists entering the worlds depicted in their art. In Canadian Jacques Drouins brilliant pinscreen animation Mindscape (1976, 8 minutes), a painter saunters through the landscape on his canvas. Fellow Canadian Guy Maddins Odilon Redon (or The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity) (1995, 5 minutes) plays with the imagery of Redons famous drawing as a steam train hurtling about in a surreal scenario populated with grotesque and seductive characters.

Robert Irwin: Slant/Light/Volume : Exhibition

Thu, 6 Aug 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Throughout his long career, Robert Irwin has pondered whether we ever have an absolutely pure or direct moment in front of a work of art. This installation, last on view 20 years ago, represents his effort to foster such an experience. Part of a series of powerfuland temporaryworks the artist created using oblique planes of translucent scrim fabric, it was commissioned by the Walker in 1971 as part of Works for New Spaces, the inaugural exhibition of its Edward Larrabee Barnes-designed building. The untitled piece, which Irwins preparatory drawings and notes refer to as Slant/Light/Volume, was last on view 20 years ago; now, its installation in the Friedman Gallery provides an opportunity for a new generation to see this pivotal work.

Irwins transformative pieces in the 60s and 70s helped to define the aesthetics and conceptual issues of the West Coast Light and Space movement. Along with fellow artist James Turrell, he explored how phenomena are perceived and altered by consciousness, in effect orchestrating the act of perception. His seemingly simple architectural interventions are philosophically rich exercises in the physical, sensory and temporal experience of space.