Contemporary Journeys coordinator Ilene Mojsilov dims the lights as six Rakhma Homes residents file into her art lab, a basement-level classroom of the Walker Art Center. Merce Cunningham dancers flicker across a projector screen. Mojsilov asks them to think about stage backgrounds and movement of the dancers’ bodies.
The group will spend the next hour using those memories to create miniature stages with paint, glue, tape, feathers, wire, and other small textiles. As the women are snipping and taping and gluing, Christina reminisces about her career at the School of Minnesota Dance Theater and Carla mentions her daughter, a professional ballerina.
Mojsilov is smiling. These are exactly the kind of conversations Contemporary Journeys is designed to provoke. Continue reading here.
This new outdoor sculptural work by artist Jim Hodges was recently acquired by the Walker Art Center and will be installed in early April. It will be formally dedicated at a ceremony at the Walker at 6 p.m. on April 26. Hodges will visit the Walker as part of the installation process on April 11 and will return for the dedication. What do you think?
Harry Belafonte is at the Walker Art Center tonight (minus the Muppets).
Want to chime in on the future of Hennepin Avenue? Tonight’s your night.
(Photo by Mark Vancleave via Hennepin Theatre Trust)
Alex Hay’s “Paper Bag” is among the many reality-bending pieces included in the Walker Art Center’s new exhibit, Lifelike. Read more about the exhibit here.
Image courtesy Walker Art Center.
Challenging and unpredictable, Story/Time is another exercise in viewership. Should we expect theater to conform to our preconceived notions of narrative and format? If we should, who and what should determine the “acceptable” form? If not, where do we draw the line?
- Becki Iverson in her review of Bill T. Jones’s Story/Time at the Walker Art Center
Now’s the time to get your Frank Gaard on. Be there.
Video by Adam Marks.
From Buenos Aires to Beirut and Tokyo to New York, the Walker Art Center’s 24th annual Out There Performance Series is going global. This year’s series features four distinctive artists from four different continents. While past years have focused on specific regions, the Walker has used globalization through mass media as a cue for the series’ new approach.
“Because of the digital age, there are shared reference points through global political and economic developments,” says Philip Bither, the Walker’s Senior Curator of Performing Arts. “Our universality today was worth focusing on.”
Read more about the Out There performances here.
Photo courtesy Walker Art Center
Unlike an encyclopedic museum, we’re working primarily with living artists, and they’re all responding to current events through creative and aesthetic means. It makes sense, then, to take on an ever-changing news format that addresses what’s going on around us. We’d also like to show how museums can be more relevant to people’s lives, and a news format suggests that connection. For art that’s often inspired by or responding to events in the world, the current-events structure of a news site is fitting.
