2007–2008 - Walker Art Center

ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE pROgRAMS
Marc Bamuthi Joseph
TEEN pROgRAMS
20 Under 20 Exhibition
Alliance for Community Media youth
Film Screening
Collecting Corruption workshop
and Exhibition
girls in the Director’s Chair
Film Festival
quest for the voice: youth Spoken
word Showcase
Student Open House
Twin Cities youth Media Network
Film Showcase
walker Art Center Teen Arts
Council (wACTAC)
youth Classes and workshops
SCHOOL AND TOuR pROgRAMS
Adult Classes
ArtsConnectEd
Classroom and Community
Connections
Contemporary Arts Forum
Educators´ Evening
Information guides
public, School, and group Tours
Teacher workshops (O´Keeffe and
Kahlo, Mark Bamuthi Joseph)
TRIO Institute: The Art of Literacy
Tour guide Bus Fund
writing Through Art
FAMILy pROgRAMS
Arty pants: your Tuesday playdate
Free First Saturday
parent Advisory group
Studio Classes for Kids
Summer’s Cool
wAC garden pack
parent workshops
COMMuNITy pROgRAMS
Explore Membership
EDuCATION AND COMMuNITy pROgRAMS
with the Kahlo exhibition, public programs presented an
evening celebrating the Mexican Day of the Dead, featuring
Calavera mask-making, tours, and films. Modern-day suburbia
came into focus with a series of lectures and panel discussions
related to the exhibition Worlds Away: New Suburban
Landscapes. The panel, Next Exit: Shifting Landscape of
Suburbia, explored ways that the suburban population, behaviors,
and trends are changing and challenging our assumptions
about suburbia. The walker’s permanent collection galleries
came to life in the spring during performances of Permanence
Collection, a play written by Minneapolis-based playwrights
Ed Bok Lee and Kira Obolensky. Directed by Hayley Finn and
performed by local actors, this project was a collaboration
between the walker and the playwrights’ Center that brought
new audiences into walker galleries and encouraged them to
see the collection installation in a new way.
Families made their way to the walker for the long-running
and successful Free First Saturdays program. with the support
of Ameriprise Financial, the Medtronic Foundation, and
wCCO-Tv, Free First Saturday welcomed more than 32,000
visitors this past year to enjoy tours, art-making activities,
story readings, films, and performances. In January, more
than 7,000 people attended the popular Finding Frida family
day—the largest number of attendees since the opening
of the walker expansion—to craft retablos, play games of
Exquisite Corpse, watch short Surrealist films, and attend a
world dance party featuring international music. with support
from Ameriprise Financial, Arty pants: your Tuesday
playdate continued to offer innovative ways for toddlers to
explore concepts such as color, shape, texture, sound, and
movement. part of the Raising Creative Kids Initiative, with
support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services,
Arty pants welcomed nearly 1,500 tots and caregivers. This
year also saw the launch of the parent Advisory group, a
coalition of parents brought together to discuss ways to make
the walker even more family friendly, offering feedback on
programs, interpretive projects, and strategies for engaging
young visitors. These lively discussions resulted in the creation
of several new programs. The session going to the galleries
Together offered parents, grandparents, and other caregivers
time-tested strategies for making the most of a shared
museum visit, including follow-up activities for home. The
popular Date Night/Art Night event gave parents the opportunity
to reconnect during some quiet time in the galleries and
a drink at wolfgang puck’s 20.21 Restaurant & Bar while their
kids created works of art in the Star Tribune Art Lab with a
professional artist and instructor. At the end of the evening,
participants came together to share their different but equally
inspiring experiences.
ArtsConnectEd, developed in partnership with the Minneapolis
Institute of Arts, remains a valuable web site resource for art
educators. Through a 2006 award of a National Leadership
grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services,
enhancements to the site continue in an effort to create a
more comprehensive database of artworks, and to debut new
tools through which educators and students can experience a
more in-depth exploration of themes and ideas surrounding
art and artistic practices.
It’s not every art exhibit that challenges the
viewer to take on gravity and watch out
for entropy. The return of miniature golf
to the walker Art Center, as part of this
summer’s celebration of the Minneapolis
Sculpture garden’s 20th anniversary, promises
to engage visitors in new and different
ways. golfers must pedal a stationary bike
backwards, operate an oversized pinball
machine and putt around bisected bowling
balls—and that’s just on one hole.
Meanwhile, across vineland place, an exhibit
titled Design for the Other 90% features
creative responses to human needs
in the developing world, such as a water
barrel shaped like a tire for easy transport.
So, on one side of the street, the intensely
practical; on the other, the entirely frivolous.
But on both sides, demonstrations
of the role of design in human life—and
of the value an institution like the walker
brings to a city.
—Star Tribune, May 24, 2008
with major support from wells Fargo, the Surdna Foundation,
the Best Buy Children’s Foundation, and vita.mn, walker Teen
programs has served as a national model for programming
with and for teenage audiences, creating a space where teens
can express their ideas and opinions in a critical and creative
exploration of contemporary art. The foundation of the program
is the walker Art Center Teen Arts Council (wACTAC),
a diverse group of young people ages 14 to 19 who gather
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EDuCATION AND COMMuNITy pROgRAMS