Walker Art Center

The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Founded in 1879 as a private gallery by lumber baron Thomas Barlow Walker, it formally became the Walker Art Gallery in 1927 and is now one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the country. Together with the adjacent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and Cowles Conservatory, it draws approximately 700,000 visitors annually. The institution's permanent collection numbers over 13,000 works spanning books, costumes, drawings, media works, paintings, photography, prints, and sculpture, with particular strength in art from 1960 to the present.

The Walker Art Center traces its origins to 1879, when Thomas Barlow Walker opened an art gallery in his home. Walker formally established his collection as the Walker Art Gallery in 1927, making it the first public art museum in the Upper Midwest. The institution's transformation into a public art center accelerated in January 1940, when the Walker Art Gallery became the Walker Art Center with support from the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration. A pivotal moment in the museum's collecting history came in the 1940s with a significant donation from Mrs. Gilbert Walker, which enabled acquisitions of major modernist works by artists including Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, and Alberto Giacometti. The Walker celebrated its 75th anniversary as a public art center in 2015 with the yearlong exhibition Art at the Center: 75 Years of Walker Collections.

The Walker's collection is firmly oriented toward modern and contemporary art, with a pronounced focus on works created after 1960. The holdings encompass more than 13,000 objects across diverse media. The visual arts program, active since the institution's founding, operates on a cycle of temporary exhibitions alongside its permanent collection, which has grown through acquisition, donation, and commission. Since the 1960s, the Visual Arts program has commissioned works from artists and held residencies for figures including Robert Irwin, Glenn Ligon, Barry McGee, Catherine Opie, Lorna Simpson, Nari Ward, and Nairy Baghramian. The museum's moving image programs are anchored by the Edmond R. Ruben Film and Video Study Collection, established in 1973 with an endowment from the Rubens, which now holds over 850 titles ranging from classic and contemporary cinema to avant-garde and documentary works by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, opportunités William Klein, Derek Jarman, Bruce Conner, Matthew Barney, Nam June Paik, and experimental filmmakers Paul Sharits and Stan Brakhage.

Signature works in the Walker's collection include Chuck Close's Big Self-Portrait, Franz Marc's Die grossen blauen Pferde (The Large Blue Horses), Edward Hopper's Office at Night, Yves Klein's Suaire de Mondo Cane (Mondo Cane Shroud), and Andy Warhol's 16 Jackies. The collection also features Roy Lichtenstein's Artist's Studio, Look Mickey, works by Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Donald Judd, Robert Gober, Sherrie Levine, Claes Oldenburg, Matthew Barney, Yoko Ono, and Rosemary Furtak. Through its longtime association with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Walker acquired 150 art objects from the Cunningham Foundation in 2011, including sculptures, sets, costumes, and works by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, a collaboration with the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board that opened in 1988 and expanded in 1992, houses Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's Spoonbridge and Cherry among other works.

The Walker Art Center occupies an urban campus of nearly seven hectares, approximately 69,000 square meters, in Minneapolis's Lowry Hill neighborhood. The current building complex dates to 1971, when a new structure designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes opened. A major expansion from 1999 to 2005, designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron with project lead Christine Binswanger, added an irregular cube that appears to float above the street level, its metallic facade reflecting light variably depending on angle of incidence. The deconstructivist-inspired window cuts and the connection between old and new buildings via a ground-level glass-walled gallery distinguish the addition. This expansion doubled the museum's exhibition space and added a 385-seat theater, restaurant, shop, and special events space, transforming the complex into a multifunctional cultural center. The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, covering approximately 44,500 square meters, lies adjacent to the north.

The Walker Art Center remains an active public institution in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with an annual attendance of around 700,000 visitors when combined with the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and Cowles Conservatory. The museum maintains a robust programming schedule across its departments. The Performing Arts department, officially designated in 1970 after Center Opera disbanded to become the Minnesota Opera, presents a 25-show season annually encompassing performance art, theater, dance, spoken word, and music, having commissioned 265 performance works since the 1960s. The in-house design and editorial department, with over 60 years of history, produces exhibition catalogues, bimonthly magazines, books, and graphic materials while organizing lectures, exhibitions, and commissions on architecture and design. The institution's endowment is approximately $185 million. Newsweek has named the Walker among the best contemporary museums in the United States.