Blogs Centerpoints

Outside notes on coming (& current) attractions

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Alec Soth, whose survey From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America opens at the Walker in September, has an exhibition focusing on his portraits at the American Academy in Rome. The New York Times just published a portrait of the utterly charming Eiko and Koma as they prepare for their three-year Retrospective Project, which brings [...]

Alec Soth, "Mother and Daughter, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1999"

Alec Soth, whose survey From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America opens at the Walker in September, has an exhibition focusing on his portraits at the American Academy in Rome.

The New York Times just published a portrait of the utterly charming Eiko and Koma as they prepare for their three-year Retrospective Project, which brings them to the Walker this fall. The story’s reference to the “moving-painting” quality of their choreography is apt, since here the duo will perform a dance/visual art installation in Gallery 2 of the ongoing Event Horizon exhibition — for the entire month of November. That piece, Naked, is a new commission; they’ll perform another new work, Raven, a centerpiece of their multiyear retrospective project, at Free First Saturday on October 2.

Co-organized by the Walker, Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers opened last week at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., and arrives here in October; the first rave review is in, at the Washington Post.

Modern Art Notes’ Tyler Green greatly admires the Chuck Close: Life, the new biography by Christopher Finch — particularly for the full chapter that Finch devotes to Big Self-Portrait, a key piece in the Walker collection and the first work that Close sold. Check out our related item last fall about Chuck, Christopher, and Linda — wife of Christopher, who sat for Chuck in 1971. Big Self-Portrait is currently a highlight of Benches & Binoculars, on view through November 21.

Finally, take a little photo tour of the art scenes in Berlin and Leipzig or, closer to home, the Pappajohn Sculpture Park in Des Moines, IA, via two recent Walker Patrons’ Circle trips.

Plant as Decorative Element in a Gallery

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One aspect of my position as a photographer here at the Walker is to document the exhibitions. This has been an ongoing process dating back to the beginning of the Walker Art Center. While reviewing images of past exhibitions, I began to notice something now absent in the galleries, potted plants.  Up until the opening [...]

One aspect of my position as a photographer here at the Walker is to document the exhibitions. This has been an ongoing process dating back to the beginning of the Walker Art Center. While reviewing images of past exhibitions, I began to notice something now absent in the galleries, potted plants.  Up until the opening of the Barnes building in 1971, potted plants were a staple in the galleries.  While there are few exhibition views containing patrons, the plants were always present.  In these images they seem to act as the stand-ins for the patrons, sometimes aloof and in the background or congregating around the radiator as if in discussion.  And then there are those that are really into the work, standing in front of a sculpture’s light, their shadows enveloping the work.

Due to a multitude of reasons, plants only reappear in the galleries if they are part of the artwork.  Many of the plants seem to have been around for many years and well taken care of by the staff.  Enjoy this look at Exhibition Photography and Plants from the Walker archives.

Bits & Pieces: art & inspiration

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Inspiration as taste sensation: Many a diner has been delighted by “Spoon, Cube, and Cherry,” the dessert at the Walker’s 20.21 that pays tribute to the Spoonbridge and Cherry centerpiece in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. In similar fashion, San Francisco pastry chef Caitlin Williams Freeman has gone on a bender with the art collection at the San Francisco [...]

“Michael Jackson & Bubbles” by Jeff Koons, with “Jeff Koons White-Hot Chocolate” dessert by Caitlin Williams Freeman

Inspiration as taste sensation: Many a diner has been delighted by “Spoon, Cube, and Cherry,” the dessert at the Walker’s 20.21 that pays tribute to the Spoonbridge and Cherry centerpiece in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. In similar fashion, San Francisco pastry chef Caitlin Williams Freeman has gone on a bender with the art collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Along with a Mondrian cake and the slyly named Koons-inspired dessert drink above, she’s concocted “works” for SFMOMA’s coffee bar that include a plate of cookies which, before consuming, you assemble into your own mini Richard Serra sculpture; a fudgsicle shaped like an Ellsworth Kelly sculpture; a Richard Diebenkorn parfait; and more. It’s a treat just to look at the spread on Readymade magazine’s website. Should it get you dreaming of a future career in pastry, browse the ArtsConnectEd website and tell us below which Walker artworks you’d turn into delectable edibles. (Dessert image above by Charlie Villyard.)

What inspires Alec Soth? The photographer, whose first survey opens at the Walker in September, just uploaded the second video for his “Continental Picture Show,” which is part of the New York Times’ Opinionator blog. People are, accordingly, quite opinionated about it. As part of its new MN Original program, Twin Cities Public Television also recently broadcast an interview with and a segment on Soth, which includes Walker curator Siri Engberg.

One city inspires another: Minneapolitans take a lot of ribbing for supposedly being slaves to New York — but today’s Wall Street Journal has a story about how the first-ever New York Gallery Week was inspired by one art dealer’s visit to the “Minneapple” –and The Quick and the Dead exhibition at the Walker:

“The week was conceived by Casey Kaplan—owner of an eponymous art gallery on West 21st Street—after experiencing the buoyant vibe in Minneapolis, where industry types congregated to see the Walker Art Center’s exhibit “The Quick and the Dead” last year.

‘You really felt a community in Minneapolis,’ Mr. Kaplan said. ‘A lot of gallery owners had flown in. There were people from MoMA. Every one was enthusiastic and wanting to be in the moment. It was such a contrast from New York.’ “

So was it just about New Yorkers transplanting themselves, for a moment, into our idyllic Midwestern metropolis, or is something more going on? Read the full story here.

Inspired to show off: On another photographic note: a couple of weeks ago, we invited people to step into David Lamelas’ spotlight, on view in The Talent Show exhibition, for a portrait. Check out all of the results here.