Marlene Dumas, Die Babe (from http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk)

A friend just send me this post from artfagcity, on images of babies in contemporary art – something we’re both interested in, being moms of toddlers ourselves. (I’d say we’re obsessed, but being moms of toddlers leaves scant time for obsessing about anything except the toddlers.) AFC’s Paddy Johnson also includes a link to this essay on motherhood and contemporary artists, from The Brooklyn Rail. While reading it, I recalled watching the uptick in strollers on the streets of Williamsburg (Brooklyn) a few years back – but at the time I wasn’t considering that many of those pushing the strollers might be working artists … Then again, isn’t Williamsburg now too expensive for working artists, with or without offspring? Circling back to artfagcity, an artistic comment on both topics.

PS – Margaret, a working artist and mom-of-toddlers and a regular here on the Walker blogs, has a number of thoughtful posts on art and parenthood.

I’ve never really understood Top Ten or “Best of” lists. Can’t we all just get along? Probably it’s just some kind of Walter Mondale self-loathing gene, but really, who cares if yet another person does – or doesn’t – think Matthew Barney is the greatest living vaseline artist of his generation from Boise? Nevertheless, here is my list of 10 or more of one thing and another in 2007.

Not Exactly Disappointing

Documenta was disappointing, but Doug Aitken’s Sleepwalkers at the Museum of Modern Art was something else. I went to New York just to see this gargantuan “urban screens” nighttime projection on the museum’s exterior, and I’m glad I did. It was a thrill to have a different kind of content so close, from a Midwestern perspective, to Times Square. In the end, however, the experiment was too hermetic. And not just the content. The context still felt like we were on the outside looking in. The engagement with the city was on the order of scale alone.

Compare Sleepwalkers with a project like Germaine Koh’s Journal. For a month she wrote a 40-word daily diary, which was displayed on a large LED ticker sign in downtown Cleveland:

13 July. Lunch with Mom and B. Date with IV really nice: dinner at Bishop’s (so expensive!) then drank port on beach. Good talking. He made me CDs for road trip. I was not too nervous.

The telegraphic tidbits chased the latest quotes from Dow Jones and the interpenetration of public and private information on such a grand scale created a certain disruptive intimacy for the urban flaneur along Euclid Avenue. [Self-exposure: I curated the Koh project for the Cleveland Ingenuityfest.]

I Wish I’d Been There

There was a continuing glut of historical reenactments in 2007, but a couple of straight-forward re-presentations made me understand better – and regret – what I missed at the time. A performance by the 70s “inventors of Krautrock” Faust at Futuresonic in Manchester brought on a hitherto unknown nostalgia for power sawing a hanging sheet of metal in a shower of sparks.

A simple installation in the exhibition Outside the Box of Kit Galloway’s and Sherrie Rabinowitz’s seminal 1980 transcontinental Hole In Space put the lie to the idea that their project is commonplace now with video cell phones and networked urban screens. Size does matter and their genious was to make it life size, neither screen-sized nor super-sized. Now I know why I keep describing this piece as seminal.

The Power to Continue to Surprise

With some artists, even though their work has a signature familiarity, it seldom feels exploitatively repetitive. Jim Campbell’s San Francisco gallery exhibition of Home Movies displayed on hanging strips of LEDs like an electronic beaded curtain were palimpsests of memories, barely visible but distinctly readable, which were someone else’s but could have been yours.

Jennifer + Kevin McCoy’s installation, The Constant World, which inaugurated the new gallery spaces at the British Film Institute is in one way, I suppose, a move from Godard’s Week End to Alpahville in terms of narrative, but it is also monumentally beautiful, perhaps especially among the Brutalist architecture of London’s South Bank.

Goaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal!

Speaking of historical reenactments, Gerard Byrne’s 1984 and Beyond was just about the best thing at the Venice Biennial. He filmed Dutch actors disucssing the future from the vantage point of the past based on a 1963 series of interviews in Playboy magazine with 12 leading science fiction authors, including Arthur C. Clark, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Heinlein. Set in the Rietveld Pavilion at the Kroller-Muller Sculpture Garden, the venues are as retro future as the conversation without ever becoming cartoony. It’s a beautiful work.

A new work, Blue Hawaii, commissioned for Janet Cardiff and George Burns Miller’s The Killing Machine and Other Stories in Darmstadt was remarkable for allowing visitors to wander alone around an unlit flooded basement of the building, but it is perhaps the least successful of a stunning retrospective exhibition. From the opening room with its eponymous killing machine – a fearsome dentist chair – to early work such as a semi-autobioraphical slide show where Cardiff and Miller at least bicker if not fight to the sonorous 40 Part Motet to a tragicomic Fitzcarraldo meets Paris, Texas set-narrative, Opera for a Small Room, the exhibition is a masterpiece of exquisitely powerful works.

Performance Art

By the time we had a Parkour chase scene with Daniel Craig’s James Bond in Casino Royale – a high budget imitation of Parkour inventor David Belle’s utterly fresh chase scene in Banlieu 13 – “free running” seemed to have been exhausted by its success, just as the urgency of graffiti art dissipated in the 80s. But the artist group Mongrel, which runs Mediashed in Southend on Sea, worked with the parkour group Methods of Movement to choreograph a “duel,” which was filmed in the Manchester (again) Arndale Shopping Centre using only the existing in-house CCTV network of cameras operated from the central control room. Once you get over the sheer exhileration of running around a mall at night alone, the performance is a show stopper. The Duellists. Brilliant.

For Fashionably Late for the Relationship, computer artist and musician-composer turned filmmaker R. Luke DuBois collaborated with Lian Amaris Sifuentes to shoot a 72-hour performance of Sifuentes in her boudoir – on a traffic island at Madison Square Park in New York City – getting ready to go out. DuBois has made a databased installation version and a feature film length cut using a time-lapse algorithm that has also allowed him to compress every Academy Award winning film into 1 minute each for Acadamey. Mesmerizing.

Second Life

Perhaps it is because our First Lives are going down the drain of climate change and war mongering that Second Life is so popular, although it is more likely simply a rerun of Web 1.0 faddishness, confusing specific platforms – Second Life – for general principles – virtuality, sociability, play, for instance. Nevertheless, Adam Nash’s Seventeen Unsung Songs located on East of Odyssey are worth listening to, and while I didn’t think Cao Fei’s Second Life installation at Venice was as convincing as her Whose Utopia? at Tate Liverpool and more recently the Walker, her Second Life machinima films iMirror are compelling.

Doh!

Whatever you think of Diller, Scofidio + Renfro’s ICA Boston – and I think it’s amazing – they “solved” the long running battle of the mediatheque. For years now, institutions have overthought and overthought what the space of new media should be like. ICA Boston tilts it on a 45 degree axis and as you look almost straight down into the evanescent waters of Boston harbor, what is meerely an Apple store on its side becomes a compelling experience. Who needs dialog tables with brilliantly simple architectural solutions?

The Materialization of the Virtual

Finally, more and more art formerly known as new media artists – and curators! – are realizing the virtues of the real. Finally. For example, online Thomson + Craighead’s Beacon has always seemed to me little more than a Google hack – sorry Jon and Ali – but when they convert one of those clacking train signs with the letters flipping over till they form a sentence, to read the the latest queries of the collective unconsious feels more like an adventure or a good mystery than self-gratifying voyeurism.

May we all enjoy one thing and another in 2008.

• Top 10 things I miss about the Walker, by Paul Schmelzer, guest blogger and former editor of Walker Magazine
• Top Ten tech of 2007, by Robin Dowden, Director of New Media Initiatives and Justin Heideman (yours truly)
• My 10 Favorite Pantone Colors That I Used in 2007, by Ryan Nelson, Design Fellow

Top 10 things I miss about the Walker

Paul Schmelzer, Guest Blogger and Former Editor of Walker Magazine

Over nine-plus years as the managing editor of the Walker magazine (and later these blogs), the place was bound to get under my skin. I left in August 2007 to edit the news, but I still think often of friends and fun back at the Walker. Of course, I miss the front-row seats to the amazing exhibitions, lectures, performances and films, but I’ll stick to the less visible. I don’t mean to sound self-serving, but what I miss most is:

The perks.

I hope I’m not revealing trade secrets here, but there’s an awful lot of side benefits to working at the Walker.

10. The all-staff email list. With the mandatory subject prefix “NON-WAC,” Walker all-staff emails can run the gamut from blatant self-promotion (”my band is playing this weekend” or, in my most recent abuse of the system, “my wife’s having an art sale”) to pure gold. Walker staffers have the best rummage sales, used cars, and enticing underground side projects and double lives that get exposed via internal email. And don’t forget the free paint… the half-used buckets of Frida Kahlo Yellow or Heart of Darkness Burgundy, made available to whomever hustles to the loading dock first.

9. Frame Sales. This once- or twice-yearly sale, just for staffers, features old frames freed up after an international touring exhibition closed or a work is deaccessioned. Five to fifty bucks can buy a museum-quality frame, in aluminum, steel, birch or cherry. (I can honestly tell friends — and note the use of ellipsis points here to indicate dramatic pause, “Oh yeah, at home I’ve got a sweet de Kooning…. frame.”)

8. The Shop employee discount, which nicely fed my Moleskine addiction for years.

7. Those sweet public restrooms, dubbed, for their sleek design and white enamel accents, iPotty!

6. The Walker library. Not a staff-only perk, mind you (just call and make an appointment), the Walker’s library houses the biggest collection of artist books in the entire world. Or maybe the upper midwest. (I can’t remember which.) Overseen by the remarkable Rosemary Furtak, it houses hand-bound books, sculptural books and editioned books, plus the best backstock of art magazines and catalogues around. I remember poring through a box of ‘zines, sketches and notes by local great Frank Gaard. He and former WAC director Kathy Halbreich had a correspondence for a time, and each of his typewritten, marginless paeans would begin with the all-caps announcement of the letter’s soundtrack: “LISTENING TO L7 AS I WRITE THIS…”

5. Carp Shop parties. The Walker’s basement dwellers — Program Services, which includes the carpentry shop, frame shop, and photography — throws mind-blowing seasonal parties. If you’ve ever marveled at how the Walker transforms its galleries from show to show, well, these are the guys (and gals) who do it. So, naturally any party of theirs will turn a dusty workshop into something unexpected: a nautical themed “Tropical Love Explosion,” “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” and “Havana Cantina sin Llantas,” which included a ‘54 Studebaker (found at a junkyard and sawed in half to fit in the freight elevator) and a Cuban street scene, complete with a clothes line across the street.

4. Pumpkin Carving Contest. These staff contests took the commonplace art of steak-knife-hacked pumpkins to an entirely new level. How might Robert Gober, Huang Yong Ping, Matthew Barney, or Kiki Smith create a pumpkiny Halloween homage? Here’s your answer.

3. The stories. For a writer, a reveler in off-the-beaten path finds, and an art lover, the Walker is Content Paradise. Where else can I say that I’ve interviewed a Swiss guy in a cardboard cave, a taxidermist charged with conserving a fake elephant, a herpetologist overseeing a reptilian panopticon, or a shirtless, gonzo jazz drummer (see “At the Center,” Walker magazine, April 2005 for that story)? I miss being embedded with the most interesting unit around.

2. The people. At this point — number two, for cryin’ out loud — I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shout-out to all the truly excellent human beings I’ve met through the Walker, past and present. Good friends, passionate co-workers and stellar intellects like Witt and Justin and Kemi and Adrienne and Doug and Kate and Emmet and Doryun and Peter and Megan and Max and SP and Yasmil and Dean and Aimee and Francesca and the other Max and Emily and Philip and Masami and Cameron and… Well, you get the idea.

1. Nate’s beard.

Top 10 tech of 2007

Robin Dowden, Director of New Media Initiatives and Justin Heideman, New Media Designer

• Apple iPhoneEveryone is sick of the hype, but it is actually a pretty nifty device. I’m not a fan of AT&T, but as a true “wireless communicator”, it’s pretty rad. The iPhone’s little brother, the iPod Touch, is also pretty nifty and we have had great success using them for some things around here.
• XO One Laptop Per ChildHaving seen a prototype at MW2007, I was excited for the release of this. It seems that if if Microsoft and Intel weren’t out to kill it, it could do well. The reviews by people who’ve gotten them seem pretty positive, and the hardware design is impressive.
• Adobe Photoshop CS3CS2 was a rather underwhelming release, aside from Smart Objects. CS3 is faster, more reliable and more polished, probably the best release of Photoshop since 5.5’s addition of the Save for Web… function. It’s smart about knowing how to work on small screens, too, which is great for laptop users.
• LeopardThere are many things to like about OS X 10.5. For me, it was probably the smoothest upgrade I’ve ever done. And Time Machine has already saved my computer once, which makes it worth every cent. But the thing that I’m most excited by, and haven’t used that much yet is Quartz Composer. QC got vastly expanded capabilities and can now automagically work on multiple machines across the network. How cool.
• GmailOK, gmail didn’t come out in 2007, but it’s support of IMAP did. Imap support moves gmail from a nicer-than-the-rest webmail to an actual useful email system. So now you can use gmail with your iPhone. And it’s smart in ways google would make it. For instance, you don’t need to save your sent messages, if you send them through gmail’s SMTP servers, it keeps them for you. Nice.
• City of Minneapolis Municipal WiFiWhereas many cities seem to be struggling with municipal wireless schemes, Minneapolis is rolling out one that seems to be working well. I myself have been using it as my sole internet connection at home for a few months now, and it’s been very reliable. I’m looking forward to doing some work from the Sculpture Garden this summer.
• AJAX/DHTML Javascript Libraries and FirebugIt seems that 2007 is when the libraries came into their own and got pretty feature complete. You have your choice of MooTools (my library of choice), JQuery, Prototype, GWT, YUI, Dojo, etc, etc. I can’t see making a website without a js library. And combining a JS library of your choice with Firebug and Firefox, it’s like you have a command line for websites.
• WordPressWordpress has been around for a while, but 2007 saw the releases of version 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3, which together added some pretty impressive features. We love wordpress, so this would be hard to leave off the list.
• Yahoo PipesBeyond the slick interface, when Pipes was released, it didn’t seem all that interesting or useful. Over time, though, it has proven rather useful. I see pipes as a quick little mashup prototyping tool.
• Digital Wireless Oven/BBQ ThermometersSeemingly simple, but awfully utilitarian. Let’s say you like to cook, but you don’t like waiting around for things to cook. This little guy is great. Put it in your meat, and it goes off when it’s the right temp. Genius!

My 10 Favorite Pantone Colors That I Used in 2007

Ryan Nelson, Design Fellow

1. 805 U — A fluorescent red/orange that will blind you.
2. Red 032 U — The quintessential red.
3. Black 6 U — It’s so dark!
4. Hexachrome Green U — It’s vibrant and awesome.
5. Warm Red U — It really is warm.
6. 122 U — The same yellow you used for finger painting in 1st grade.
7. Violet U — I think I like this color because violet light bends the most when dispersed by a prism.
8. 3385 U — A positively kitsch, but amazing seafoam-green color.
9. 871 U — It’s gold. What’s not to love?
10. 803 U — It reminds me of the sun.

• Top Ten Things I saw/heard/read, 2007, by Doryun Chong, Visual Arts Assistant Curator
• Top Ten Films of 2007 and Top Three Best New Old Films, by Joe Beres, Film/Video Assistant
• Top Nine Fonts of 2007, by Emmet Byrne, Designer
• Top ten most frequently played MP3’s while working at the Walker in 2007, by Vance Wellenstein, Design Fellow

Moment of confession: I asked the designers to come up with a list of the best book or magazine covers of 2007, but gave them an out to do something else if they didn’t like that idea. Well, designers love an out, and we get a few eclectic (but fun) lists instead. More of that tomorrow.

Top Ten Things I saw/heard/read, 2007

Doryun Chong, Visual Arts Assistant Curator

1. documenta 12

   Even with the proliferation of contemporary art biennales all over the world all the time, this last summer’s back-to-back opening of the Venice Biennale (every two years), the documenta (every five years), and the Munster Sculpture Project (every ten years) was a rare occurrence that was the contemporary art world’s equivalent to the planetary alignment. I didn’t go to all of them but made my own pilgrimage to see the latter two, being especially interested in seeing my second documenta. Directed and curated by the Austrian team (professional and in marriage) of Roger Buergel and Ruth Noack, the sprawling exhibition of over 100 artists was presented in five venues around Kassel, Germany. There was no title or theme, nor was its conceptual shape clearly discernible (the first sentence of the curators’ foreword in the catalogue read, “ The big exhibition has no form.” I’m still not sure if this should be maddeningly frustrating or perversely comforting). The visitors at the opening, deeming the exhibition intentionally obscurantist, self-indulgent, and even arrogant, responded with reactions that ranged from confused fascination to eye-rolling dismissal to outright hostility. Reviews have been, in general, on the negative side (one notable exception being the New York Times). I still don’t know what to think of it, but sometimes you just have to focus on individual moments that mattered for you, such as: Trisha Brown’s amazing installation/performance “ Floor of the Forest” and works by some of the most important Eastern European conceptualists–e.g., Ion Grigorescu, Zofia Kulik, Sanja Ivekovic, Jiri Kovanda–little known and shown in this part of the world.

2. The Road and Year of Magical Thinking

   In a year when I seemed to have given up on reading for pleasure and self-betterment, I did finally manage to read–on the way to and from Kassel–two of the bleakest and most beautiful books by American writers in recent years. Whatever consternation I felt with the exhibition and its refusal of generosity I felt was much assuaged by the devastation and redemption in Cormac McCarthy and Joan Didion’s words.

3. 10th Istanbul Biennial: “ Not Only Possible, But Also Necessary: Optimism in the age of Global War”

   An anti-documenta, one might say: it was clearly done with a fraction of the German extravaganza’s budget and without its efficient organizational machine, and the chaotic but considered mess that often characterizes the style of its curator, Hou Hanru provided an exuberant experience. Unfolding inside a giant seaside depot and in a crumbling modernist mall, among other venues, the show was filled with a lot of documentary-inspired video works telling viewers about the world we live in but often know very little about. It was a nice conversational partner–for me personally–to the Walker’s exhibition Brave New Worlds. And if nothing else, Kassel’s no match for Istanbul, a truly magical city.

4. Tetsumi Kudo @ la maison rouge and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster @ ARC

   Two great exhibitions in Paris this spring. First, the incredible survey of the work of the late Japanese artist at a small private foundation revealed an alternately gorgeous, grotesque, quirky, and sublime world of images and ideas (the Walker’s own retrospective of the artist’s work is coming this fall). It was a very nice contrast to the Rio de Janeiro-based French artist’s thoughtful installation of a series of atmospheric, synesthetic environments.

5. The new New Museum

   The first museum to be built in downtown New York is a knock-out–a kind of stacked bento box in shimmering aluminum claddings (I can’t help but be reminded of our own silver cube), designed by the Tokyo-based firm, SANAA. The inaugural exhibition “ Unmonumental”–a group show of sculptures that will continue to metamorphose by adding collages and sound works during its run–astutely tapped into the zeitgeist and just plain looked great. New York suddenly seemed exciting and dynamic!

6. Beijing, circa 2007

   Despite the supposed governmental programs for curtailing pollution and beautifying the city in general, the city seemed far from its target, with the Olympics less than a year to go. Nevertheless, there’s probably no other place like it on earth. Seeing the Herzog and de Meuron’s “ bird nest” main stadium, and Koolhaas’s CCTV headquarter building under construction was a truly mesmerizing experience.

7. Walid Raad + Janine di Giovanni

   If I may toot my own horn: we brought the New York-based artist and the celebrated Paris-based American (former) war correspondent to speak as part of the related programs for Brave New Worlds. Raad enraptured the audience with a lecture about the recent history of Lebanon, which wove in and out of fact and fiction, while di Giovanni’s straightforward telling of some of the horrors she witnessed in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Sierra Leone left the audience completely awestruck–I think everyone was brought to tears at some point that evening. You can watch them on the Walker Channel, here and here .

8. The Hall of Human Origins, American Museum of Natural History, NY

   A gesamtkunstwerk (“ total work of art”) in itself, this installation of dioramas and diagrams was supremely informative and visually fascinating, totally high-tech and at the same time, vaguely anachronistic. What would Mike Huckabee think of this?

9. G. F. Handel’s Giulio Cesare (1724) and Alcina (1735)

   In the year when my musical taste went totally south–or rather, backwards, in time, all the way to the 18th century–I obsessively listened to the two opera serias by Handel. Perhaps it’s the comfort of time-worn narratives of love and heartbreak, chivalry and treachery, magic and sorcery. Or it’s just that Handel wrote some of the most transcendent melodies. There are great recent recordings/performances of the former at the Glyndebourne Festival, U.K., and the latter, with Renee Fleming and Susan Graham in Paris. Go to Youtube and search them.

10. “ Talented Ms. Shin Jeong-ah”

    This was also the year of women on the verge of breakdowns… in public–i.e., Britney, Lindsay, and Paris. But the best story of the year for me was about a certain South Korean curator/professor of art history, who was disgraced when her academic and professional credentials (an alleged Ph.D. from Yale, etc. etc.) turned out to be fraudulent. She was fired from her positions (including a co-directorship of the Gwangju Biennale), but the story didn’t end there. It began to spread like a wildfire, leading to massive coming-outs of scared cultural celebrities and social notables about their faked or padded degrees, and then, incredibly, it was revealed that she had an illicit ongoing affair with a governmental higher-up. Where else in the world can a lowly art curator rock a whole country and society?

Top Ten Films of 2007

Joe Beres, Film/Video Assistant

1. Sunshine (Danny Boyle)
2. Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno)

   

3. Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)
4. I’m Not There (Todd Haynes)
5. Inland Empire (David Lynch)
6. The Life of Reilly (Barry Polterman and Frank Anderson)
7. Juno (Jason Reitman)

   

8. Control (Anton Corbijn)
9. Day Night Day Night (Julia Loktev)

   

10. Knocked Up (Judd Apatow)

Top Three Best New Old Films

1. Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
2. The Holy Mountain (Alejandro Jodorowsky)
3. Blade Runner: The Final Cut (Ridley Scott)

Top Nine Fonts of 2007

Emmet Byrne, Designer

1. Optima

   

2. ITC Toms Roman

   

3. Greta Mono (for Dwell)

   

   This typeface can be found in Dwell Magazine, and the above sample is scanned from page 34 of the February 2008 issue.

4. Courier Sans

   

5. Christiana

   

6. Futura Black

   

7. Maple
8. ITC Grouch

   

9. Coranto

   

Emmet adds that this is the REAL list of top ten fonts of 2007.

Top ten most frequently played MP3’s while working at the Walker in 2007

Vance Wellenstein, Design Fellow

• Drastik: Drastik Pleasures
• Feist: The Park
• Bat for Lashes: The Wizard
• Cut Copy: Hearts on Fire (DSTAR edit)
• Cadillac Blindside: Empty Bottle Evening
• Eddie Money: Take Me Home Tonight
• New Young Pony Club: The Get Go
• Lo-Fi-FNK: Steppin’ Out
• Snowden: Anti-Anti
• Born Against: Mary and Child

• Here and There: Minnesota Design and Architecture Highlights for 2007, by Andrew Blauvelt, Design Director and Curator
• The Top 10 Video Games of ‘07, by Brent Gustafson, Senior New Media Designer
• The Top 10 YouTube Videos of 2007, by Marty Marosi, WACTAC member

No teasers about tomorrow other than to boast that it’ll be good.

Here and There: Minnesota Design and Architecture Highlights for 2007

Andrew Blauvelt, Design Director and Curator

Any year-end list is bound to be a subjective exercise in remembrance, no matter how faulty, so with that caveat in mind, here are my highlights. Somewhat overshadowed by the hoopla surrounding some major Minneapolis cultural buildings that opened in 2006, the Benedicta Arts Center at the College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota, opened in the fall of 2006 but seemed to get lost in the shuffle (or in my mind, at least), so it is for 2007. HGA, the architects of the note-worthy 1960’s original, were asked to expand the facility. Riffing on the color scheme of the original’s brick faade, architects Tim Carl and Jamie Milne-Rojek, mimic those hues but in anodized aluminum panels.

There’s context and continuity in the final design but also freshness and variety–a lesson that should be applied to many academic campuses, but typically isn’t. But it was a good year for academic campus additions in this list, at least. Vince James Associates Architects’ (VJAA) Petters Pavilion at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, was a sensitive, but not slavish, expansion of the Marcel Breuer-designed campus. VJAA also completed the Lavin-Bernick Center for Student Life at Tulane University in New Orleans this year, an innovative take on the dynamics of climate, behavior, and program. I suppose the project was technically a rehab, although the results are much more transformation than renovation.

Speaking of out-of-state rehabs, MS&R (of Mill City Museum fame) reached beyond Minnesota to showcase their particular talent for adaptive reuse of historic sites, converting spaces at the old Navy Yard in Philadelphia for Urban Outfitters new offices.

Gold Medal Park next door to the Guthrie Theater opened in the spring, adding a refreshing and unexpected formality to the Minneapolis park system (not to mention some nicely designed lights and benches–Minneapolis, just say no to ersatz Victoriana) as well as much needed green space to the Riverfront area. The park’s focal point, a thirty-two foot high mound, affords some great views of the area and functionally serves to cap some contaminated soil from the area’s industrial past. As Tom Oslund, landscape architect for the project, put it, “ we tore down a parking lot and put up paradise.”

Further north, Duluth-based architect David Salmela captured an AIA award for the Clure Project, a collection of three houses (including his own) overlooking Lake Superior. Just getting your neighbors to agree on anything would be an achievement in and of itself, let alone a modernist enclave.

I finally finished my own modernist enclave in South Minneapolis: “ chez concret,” as my partner calls it, but officially dubbed the B&W House by Julie Snow Architects.

This year’s theme of local design in absentia continues with Process Type Foundry’s release of Seravek, a new typeface family by Eric Olson, who operates his business virtually but was otherwise physically located in Redding, England by way of Deerwood, Minnesota.

The locally based but globally produced Blu Dot Design ventured into upholstered furniture and significantly expanded their collection of modern furnishings. Particularly note-worthy are the Sprout table series, with its tripartite, open, tubular, metal legs with peek-a-boo color inside, and the Animal sofa, available in small and big, with a metal x-shaped base and contrast color-stitched tufting.

Speaking of animals, Jeff Koons’ smiling monkey design makes an appearance on a beach towel, but not just any piece of terry cloth. Target partnered with the Art Production Fund and several artists (Koons, Cindy Sherman, Elizabeth Peyton, and Kehinde Wiley) to produce the collection of towels–just in time for December’s Art Basel Miami Beach crowd, but available to all beachcombers via on-line purchase. (Ed. note: The towels don’t seem to be available on target.com anymore, but can be found here.)

And finally, photographer Alec Soth created this year’s Fashion Magazine–an unlikely mix of Parisian fashionistas and Minnesota Nice. For Soth, Paris Minnesota does not capture its subjects as much as it “ explores the distance between those two places.” Part here, part there.

The Top 10 Video Games of ‘07

Brent Gustafson, Senior New Media Designer

10. Contra 4 (DS)

The original game made the “Konami Code” famous, but you will have so such luck with it in this game. Contra 4 is a throwback to the original, only it’s intended for the hardest of the hardcore. Most players will never get past the first level, it’s that menacing.

9. Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (360)

The best multiplayer puzzle game ever made is now in HD and rebalanced. You can now play as someone besides Ken or Donovan and actually have a chance to win! Oh, and no more “diamond trick” cheese either.

8. Knytt Stories (PC)

Perhaps the exact opposite of Contra 4, Knytt Stories is the zen master of platforming. More about exploration and abience than action, it’s a minimalist indie game that makes you rethink what being a platformer means.

7. Crackdown (360)

It’s Grand Theft Auto, only you get to play as the cops…and it’s better. Perhaps the best “sandbox” game to date, Crackdown lets you do just about anything. Did I mention you get superhuman powers to fight the bad guys? Only your imagination is the limitation here.

6. Desktop Tower Defense (PC/Mac)

The classic game of Tower Defense, with some new twists. Don’t let the fact that it takes place on a work desk fool you. You can’t play this at work, it’s simply too addictive, especially since it’s a free flash game.

5. Jeanne D’Arc (PSP)

A fictionalized anime retelling of the story of Joan of Arc as a Strategy Role Playing Game. One of the better SRPG’s to come out in a long time, with a lot of polish. But we should expect as much from the team that brought us Professor Layton and soon, Dragon Quest IX.

4. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (PC/Mac)

There’s a reason 9 million+ people play WoW. The Burning Crusade is the first expansion to the biggest Massively Multiplayer Online game ever created and it lived up to the hype. Now I just need to figure out how I’m going to get 5000 gold for my epic flying mount.

3. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii)

The third and final installment to the trilogy whose first game is one of the best ever made and then took a nosedive in the second installment, Metroid Prime 3 lives up to the original’s quality. It also reinvents how we will play and interact in First Person Shooters for years to come.

2. Rock Band (360/PS3/PS2)

Guitar Hero was just guitars. Rock Band is guitar, bass, drums, and singing together with three of your friends. Made by the guys at Harmonix who brought you the first two Guitar Hero’s, Rock Band is the pinacle of the genre, and perhaps the best party game ever made.

1. Portal (PC/360/PS3)

Part of the Orange Box (which also includes Half Life 2 and Team Fortress 2), Portal is not just the best game of the year, it’s the best game of the year by a mile. In an industry that doesn’t find truly new genres very often, it creates the First Person Puzzler, with its ingeniously simple use of portals that connect disparate locations to amazing effect. With some of the most outstanding (and hilarious) voiceover work ever in a game, and a wonderful finale, Portal has no equal.

Top Ten YouTube Videos of 2007

Marty Marosi, WACTAC member

• Cat Jumping over Baby Gate YouTube – Funny cat trys to jump over baby gate!
• Norman McLaren-Neighbors YouTube – neighbours – norman mclaren [1952]
• Ninjas mess up YouTube – Afro Ninja 2
• Rube Goldberg Machines YouTube – Rube Goldberg Machines
• Japanese Pranks YouTube – Japanese Pranks in Huge Group
• Italian Spiderman YouTube – Italian Spiderman Trailer
• Zombie Kid YouTube – Zombie Kid Likes Turtles
• Grape Stomping gone wrong YouTube – Grape Stomping Gone Wrong
• High Voice talk show YouTube – Host Loses Control – Guest with High Pitched Voice
• Projectile Vomit on live TV YouTube – Projectile Vomit On Live TV

In relieved farewell to the year that was, we invited a few guests to share their favorites.

Thanks to them for taking time to share their thoughts, and to you for stopping by to read us the last 12 months.

Contents:

Top Ten Concerts of 2006 by Walker Film/Video assistant Joe Beres

Ten Best Dance Performances of 2006 by choreographer/dancer Penelope Freeh

Best of Everything by painter Frank Gaard

Top Ten Art Blogs by Modern Art Notes‘ Tyler Green

Best World Music Releases of 2006 by Walker publicist Rachel Joyce

15 Things I Didn’t Realize I’d Miss About Minneapolis (With Only One Slander of Garrison Keillor) by Fimoculous‘ Rex Sorgatz

A Relatively Random List of Things Recalled by Paul Schmelzer

The Five Best Books by Paul Schumacher, book buyer for the Walker Shop

Ten Best DVDs of 2006 by Walker Film/Video intern Kathie Smith

Best of Art and Culture by Alec Soth, photographer

TOP TEN CONCERTS OF 2006

Joe Beres, Film/Video assistant

1. SunnO)))/Boris/Oren Ambarchi, Walker Art Center, MPLS

I was looking forward to this one from the moment Diana in Performing Arts mentioned it was a possibility, and it far exceeded my high hopes. Boris offered every aspect of their multi-faceted style, and Sunn created the most physical manifestation of music I have ever experienced. This one quickly moved to the top of my all-time favorites list.

2. The Dickies, Triple Rock Social Club, MPLS

To think, I almost skipped this show. What a mistake that would have been. After nearly 20 years, they still put on one of the best live shows in the business – inflatable dolls, scuba gear, and a large penis puppet named Stewart – what’s not to love?

3. Keiji Haino, Walker Art Center, MPLS

And I thought the NY show was good (see #5). This is the most captivating solo show I have ever seen – incredible guitar work and a haunting vocal performance. I only wish it was longer.

4. Flaming Lips/Sonic Youth, Minnesota State Fair, St. Paul

After a full day at the fair, two of the summer’s biggest rainstorms, a near cancellation of the show, and shoes full of water came an incredible evening. I didn’t think SY would work in such a big setting, but they were marvelous and sounded perfect. The Lips, though not my favorite band, are old-school showmen. The streamers, confetti, Wayne Coyne’s desire to entertain every person there, and the surprise Sabbath cover at the end made this a truly memorable night.

5. Gorilla Biscuits, Triple Rock Social Club, MPLS

It was as if I was 15 again. Bidip-Bo!

6. Keiji Haino/Melvins, Symphony Space, NYC

I was lucky a NYC trip coincided with this live scoring of Cameron Jamie’s Trilogy. The first ever collaboration, live or otherwise, of the Melvins and Keiji Haino was truly a sight/sound to behold.

7. John Zorn/Electric Masada, Walker Art Center, MPLS

Finally, my chance to see Zorn – it did not disappoint. The Electric Masada group was unbelievably tight and Music for Films set got me to look at some familiar films in a new way and gave me a first look at a few I had wanted to see for years.

8. EndTimes Festival, Turf Club, St. Paul

Three remarkable days of music that were surprisingly well-organized and arranged. Some of my favorites included, Yellow Swans, Oxbow, Nate Denver’s Neck, Smegma, and the trance inducing closing set by the Boredoms.

9. High on Fire, Turf Club, St. Paul

A relentless and sweaty set by Oakland’s finest. Their live shows are not to be missed.

10. The Ex, Triple Rock Social Club, MPLS

It’s hard to believe that this is their first show in the Twin Cities in their 25 year history. They are still relevant and evolving, and sound better than ever.

Runners up:

The Melvins: I can’t believe I saw them 4 times this year. Seeing them at the Soo Visual Art Center was great, but so was the two drummer, three vocal set at the Fine Line.

Mono at Triple Rock, MPLS: It was a great year to see Japanese band in Minneapolis. Hearing their delicate/beautiful meets heavy/intense sound live was fantastic. Pelican was lucky to have played before them that night.

Growing/Thrones at The Syrup Room, NYC: The music was great, but the experience of hopping on a the L-train to a deserted industrial area in Williamsburg to find a clandestine club in a former canning factory really added to the encounter.

Zebulon Pike at Triple Rock, MPLS: Or anywhere for that matter. ZP is probably my favorite local band, and is comprised of some of the Cities most talented musicians. Their brand of prog doom-metal is mind-blowing live.

TEN BEST DANCE PERFORMANCES OF 2006

Penelope Freeh, blogger, choreographer, dancer with James Sewell Ballet for 12 years

1. Schoenberg Serenade by James Sewell. February 15. James Sewell Ballet Studio, Minneapolis. This is the first assembly of dancers, musicians (St. Paul Chamber Orchestra), and costumes. Against the stark studio, this neoclassical dance is set in relief, finally coming to life expressing perfect symmetry of formal structure and formless experimentation. [photo]

2. She Captains by Shawn McConneloug. June 17. Thorp Building, Minneapolis. While text-heavy, the use of elements (water, air, earth) is vivid and immediate. There are images so beautiful they hurt, like when high heels belatedly fall off a hanging body covered in a long skirt.

3. Tiny Town by Karen Sherman. July 23. Walker Art Center/Southern Theater’s Momentum. Southern Theater. Sherman’s singular choreographic voice rings clearer than ever in this at once playful and serious post-modern musing on her past. The final duet is naively erotic as only a coming-of-age experience can be.

4. Dirty by Chris Schlichting. August 12. Fringe Festival. Southern Theater, Minneapolis. Compelling from the strawberry-and-clothesline get-go, the sometimes deadpan, sometimes virtuosic movement vocabulary within the modest drama soars.

5. Broadway Bound….and Gagged by Justin Leaf and Brooke Murphy. August 27. Bryant Lake Bowl Theater, Minneapolis. This original dance/musical borrowing songs from a wide spectrum of pre-existing shows is magnificent in its homemade and bawdy earnestness.

6. Brahms Duet by Sally Rousse with Mariusz Olszewski. October 12-15. James Sewell Ballet. Guthrie McGuire Theater, Minneapolis. Watching from the wings, I am enfolded in this dance, welcomed into the delicate then rough-and-tumble sound and movement scores reflecting on love and loss.

7. The Moor’s Pavane by Jose Limon. November 4. Minnesota Dance Theatre. Ritz Theater, Minneapolis. Beautifully executed, this historically significant masterpiece blows me away. Portraying the drama of Othello, it continues to hold its own as a brillant demonstration of abbreviated, essential storytelling.

8. Dirty the Bones: On Being White and Other Lies by Ellen Marie Hinchcliffe. November 10. Naked Stages. Intermedia Arts. This touching and brave one-woman performance art piece contains a dance sequence unparalleled by anyone other than perhaps Napoleon Dynamite.

9. The Magician’s Wife by Cathy Young. November 18. Zenon Dance Company. Southern Theater. Witty, evocative, and ultimately bitter, this dance-theater quartet is a costume drama on its ear.

10. Veneers by Uri Sands. November 19. TU Dance. O’Shaughnessy Auditorium. The riveting gestures and movement vocabulary are established early and developed masterfully throughout this compelling new work. The pas de deux and final self-flagellating with bouquets of flowers are passages that continue to electrify and haunt.

Honorable Mention: James Sewell’s spontaneous and improvised solo. December 3. James Sewell Ballet cast party. The home of James Sewell and Sally Rousse. Winding down after ten shows in five days, the company relaxes by…dancing more! Accompanied by the Tiger Lillies, James treats us to his elegant brilliance, reminding us of the vitality, the need, the importance, of dancing in one’s socks down the stairs and across the wood floor.

FRANK GAARD’S BEST OF EVERYTHING

Frank Gaard, painter and guest blogger

1. Best painting in exhibition: A work by Florentine Piero di Cosimo in the collection lent to the MIA by the Wadsworth Athenaeum. I visited the picture 5 or 6 times, and every time I felt it was greater and more profound.

2. Best exhibition: Heart of Darkness, a truly contemporary and futuristic experience. Kai Althoff is a sad new star in the heavens we name art. Finally the thrift shop and the porn shop arrived at Archie Walker’s Palace of Pleasure.

3. As far as music goes, my tastes are odd. I listened to the Libertine’s self-titled record many times and began to wonder if the Brits have completely taken rock away from us hillbillies? The new Sonic Youth CD was very good, but it was also the same old riffs. I guess I like those riffs and Kim Gordon is sort of a rock god, non?

4. Best art book: The catalogue for the huge Dada show at MoMA and in Paris at the Pompidou, some of the detail in the book is spell binding, and the photos of all our heroes of the days of dada are priceless (ha!).

5. Best novel: Veronica by Mary Gaitskill. Not her best book, but Veronica is soulful in the way it takes us back to those terrible days when so many people were infected with HIV and their wasn’t much to help them. I saw her read from the book; it’s curious to see a writer becoming older and having written in many ways a first novel, a history even of Veronica and of a time a particular time when we all were younger. And it’s good to remember how difficult and dark those times were; it reminded me a bit of Nan Goldin’s photos of that time. Gaitskill has an incredible descriptive gift and the courage to deploy it.

6. Best gallery show by someone in the neighborhood: Far and away, I felt Alexa Horochowski’s exhibit at MIA’s new Minnesota Galleries was the best and most beautiful show in town. The distance she’s traveled as a painter, the expressive envelope of her sensibility, make this a show a show to remember. It’s a shame it wasn’t at the Walker instead of hidden amidst the glitz of more galleries full of the same old stuff (as opposed to the former MAEP gallery which celebrated neighborhood art by putting right in the front of the building). Where it was looked like a Walker show because it had that chic white space (with a window), c’est la vie.

7. Best movie: I like detective movies and though I know The Black Dahlia wasn’t a masterwork, it was hugely entertaining, and yes I love LA, I love the ambience of Los Angeles after the war. And it is pretty hot to see Ms. Swank and Ms. Johanson taking turns with with that young actor from (again) our neighborhood, forgot his name. Sure, it seemed like Dick Tracy at times, but it reminds you that the rich are smarter because they have money!

8. Best talk at Walker: I gotta say Mike Kelley, most especially when he told the audience he was a Marxist. And I’m not just saying this cuz I got a free dinner with Mike in the 20.21 Club. No, when Mike gets rolling his speech is a thing to hear, and the content is always surprising and it’s like listening to history speak.

9. Best bookstore in Minneapolis: The used Booksmart shop near Uptown Theater. If you can’t find something in there you aren’t trying. Really an amazing place to find books, great art section and great poetry sections, it’s a bookstore after the heart of those of us who love book shops and good prices.

10. Best café: Jasmine Deli. Thanks to my Pollock-Krasner grant I’ve been eating at the Jasmine rather frequently with my fiancee. Sure do love those spicy pork sandwiches, and, boy, where else would you see Phillipe Vergne and Kinji Akagawa or any of the other sheiks of Nicollet Avenue.

TOP TEN ART BLOGS

Tyler Green, Modern Art Notes

In no particular order, these are the ten art blogs I most look forward to reading.

1. Alec Soth: The Minnesota-based photographer started blogging in 2006. Connects photography and art to the world around it in creative, thoughtful ways.

2. Edward Winkleman. A New York City gallery owner by day, a writer by night. Posts smartly on lots of art-related issues, but Winkleman’s musings on the art market are especially insightful. If only the NYT wrote about the art market this intelligently.

3. On the Cusp: A regional art blog that has earned itself a national audience. Good mix of news and opinion. Broke the story of Max Anderson’s hiring as director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art (a scoop that the local media cowardly failed to credit).

4. Hankblog: In 2006 many arts institutions started art blogs as a way to communicate with their communities. The best of the new bunch is Hankblog, the Henry Art Gallery’s (get it?) blog which doesn’t just look inward, but smartly places the Henry in a national context.

5. PORT: The undisputed champ of the regional art blogs. Some writers I know bitch and moan about how their cities are ignored by the art press. Others, such as Jeff Jahn, find a way to make themselves impossible to overlook.

6. AFC: Paddy Johnson’s NYC-based blog has a childish title, but if you can ignore it the site is whip-smart.

7. Exhibitionist: The Geoff Edgers-penned Boston Globe art blog covers more than the visual arts, but so what? Unlike many (most?) MSM-types, Edgers has an eye for quirky-smart items that are perfect for a blog.

8. Modern Art Obsession: Even though its real obsession sometimes appears to be the use of all caps and strikethroughs, this NYC blog hits lots of New York-based high points – and does it with a terrific, over-the-top sense of humor.

9. Contemporary/Pulitzer: Two neighboring St. Louis arts institutions have teamed up on this blog, which includes behind-the-scenes info, first-offer tickets for events, and fabulous pictures of everything they do.

10. Walker blogs: No, this isn’t a kiss-up. Most art museums are filled with creative folks who don’t curate shows. The Walker has found a fun way to harness their energy to present something entertaining to its public.

BEST WORLD MUSIC RELEASES OF 2006

Rachel Joyce, Walker publicist and cohost of KFAI’s “Shake & Bake”

1. Lura-Di Korpu Ku Alma [reissue]: Cape Verdian singer Lura’s third album is a smoldering blend of Creole lyrics that range from whispers to raspy roars over seductive indigenous, Latin, and R&B rhythms.

2. Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, Living Like A Refugee“: At it’s heart an infectious up-tempo reggae record, “Living Like a Refugee” brings highlife and zoukous to the party as well. The lyrical content (in English) is hefty stuff-the trauma of refugee camp relocation, hunger, war-but steeped in buoyant optimism set over catchy rhythms and hooks that keeps the record from wallowing in despondency.

3. Various artists, The Rough Guide to West African Gold:

Ain’t we lucky we got’em-good times! African jazz-soul-funkin’ good times.

4. Cheikh L, Lamp Fall

5. Cheb I Sabbah-La Ghriba, La Kahena Remixed-Six Degrees: Dance floor killers from the master DJs/producers of North Africa and the Asian Underground. “Now with 50% more Moroccan Break Beats!” “Fortified with Xtreme Gnawa Flavor” “A complete source of North African dub & house daily intake”

6. Various, Blues Around the World: The stellar compilation of variations of American blues from around the globe proves blues is in the heart. Never seen a holler? Never heard the coal train rumblin’ by or lost your good man to a St. Louie gal? No guitar? Never you mind. A tabla or a kora will do ya just fine. The discs Tuarreg/Chicago, Mississippi/Zanzibar, Piedmont/Barcelona mash-ups demonstrate the enduring influence of early blues masters and modern gospel & folk/blues artists.

7. Idan Raichel, The Idan Raichel Project: Usually this cross-cultural-understanding-through-music-we-are-the-friggiin’-world -crap makes me choke on my spring rolls and Tusker, but home fries gets it right on this disc. Idan is an Israeli composer/keyboardist who brings traditional Jewish music together with the musical forms of Israel’s growing Ethiopian and Arab communities. And he punctuates it with Caribbean, African, and hip hop vibes to great affect. And if the sales charts are correct, the headz are noddin’ to this project from Tel Aviv to the West Bank.

8. Various, African Rebel Music: A standout compilation of dance hall and reggae from its source-Africa. With the exception of Bongo from Tanzania and a smattering of Francophone reggae/hip-hop acts, this music is hard to come by if you do not have a connection to bootlegs or pay hefty import costs. Intriguing sounds from a generation raised at the alter of Alpha Blondy, Lucky Dube, and, of course, Marley.

9. Various Artists, REPUBLICAFROBEAT 2: Funk, disco and soul with prominent African rhythms. DJ Floro picked a bunch of the best but my favorites are Bukky Leo’s (former Fela band member) version of Timmy Thomas’ soul classic ‘Why Can’t we Live Together?’ and the Bwana Mix of Al Green’s “Love Ritual.”

10. Sergio Mendes, Timeless: A strong collection of neo-soul and hip hop acts rework the classics of Sergio Mendes without any of the schmaltz that usually seeps into these efforts. Caution: anyone recovering from the Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps” get ready for a relapse after you hear “That Heat.”

15 THINGS I DIDN’T REALIZE I’D MISS ABOUT MINNEAPOLIS (WITH ONLY ONE SLANDER OF GARRISON KEILLOR)

Rex Sorgatz, founder of MNSpeak and Fimoculous and recent transplant to Seattle

15. How the turning of the seasons is determined by Scott Seekins’ wardrobe.

14. 1:30 AM, shivering and drunk, desperately searching for the Manny’s under 35W, so that I can fall asleep with a cheese torta in my tummy.

13. Next morning hangover cure: the Rustler from Lucé. Delivered by dude with serious septum damage.

12. Replacements folklore.

11. How not everyone you know is a project manager. (Seattle is the land of 10,000 PMs.)

10. “After bar at Gretchen’s.”

9. Not the snow. But maybe the icicles.

8. Bad red wine in plastic cups at gallery openings in Northeast.

7. The freaks at Shinder’s.

6. That Ashbery poem that runs along the top of the Walker bridge. Showing it to a girl on a first date is pure gold.

5. Hating on Block E.

4. How the discount on ice cream at Sebastian Joe’s increases as the temperature decreases.

3. Warehouse parties where lithe girls dance to forgotten techno.

2. How everyone has a side project.

1. Running into Keillor at the Double Deuce.

A RELATIVELY RANDOM LIST OF THINGS RECALLED

Paul Schmelzer, managing editor, Walker magazine

Best use of visionary art in a marketing piece: Art Directors Club Call for Entry, with art by Norbert Kox

There’s not much competition in this category, but I’m glad the honor goes to an old friend. Green Bay’s Norb Kox has a remarkable bio: born the day the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, he served in the military, became an Outlaw biker, and eventually found Jesus and spent nine years in the woods near Siren, WI, developing a personal spirituality that arose from intense study of scriptures. While a clever payoff for ADC’s “Final Call for Entries” concept, his “apocalyptic visual parables” have so much more detail and depth.

Best Walker exhibition on tour: House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective

Huang Yong Ping makes contemporary art that doesn’t seem temporary. His sculptures feel more like artifacts than art at times, like relics unearthed in a dig. I found his art to be profoundly moving, occasionally creepy (the bats!), often funny, and deeply arresting. Tour schedule here.

Best museum publication: Studio

While I’m partial to our own Walker magazine, the Studio Museum’s quarterly has qualities (and a budget!) I wish we could emulate. It’s packed with interviews, the voices of artists and curators, photo spreads, and features of interest to its Harlem neighbors. I especially liked a 2005 photo-essay on Frank Gaskin’s series of murals on security gates along 125th Avenue.

Top ten to remember: We lost many great creators in ‘06. Let’s not forget them: artist Nam June Paik, reggae/ska legend Desmond Dekker, Egyptian novelist/Nobel prizewinner Mahfouz Naguib, filmmaker Robert Altman, Aeron chair designer Bill Stumpf, installation artist Jason Rhoades, and playwright Wendy Wasserstein.

Favorite Walker acquisition: Dr. Lakra’s flash art

Actually acquired in 2005, I learned of our acquisition of seven works on paper by Mexican artist Dr. Lakra from Tyler Green’s blog. Amid our excellent collection of Minimalist works, our wonderful cache of Beuys multiples, and every one of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster films, it’s great to see the earthy, carnivalesque work of this Mexico City-based artist.

Favorite single artwork: Thomas Hirschhorn’s Cavemanman

When I met Hirschhorn during the installation of our show Heart of Darkness, I had the gall to tell him I didn’t get his work, especially the huge Swiss Army knife made of cardboard, tape, aluminum foil, and cellophane he showed here in 1998. But walking through the shiny and claustrophobic tunnels of Cavemanman, I was moved by the over-the-top-ness of it and the germaneness of it to current events. Discussing the project with him only underscored my change of, ahem, heart.

Favorite bumpersticker: “Think About Honking If You (Heart) Conceptual Art”

Favorite Walker photo: Flagging Patriotism

Cameron Wittig’s staged image of a flag feebly fluttering next to a plastic fan beautifully illustrated the kind of trumped-up patriotism artists Bill T. Jones and Sekou Sundiata discussed in a March essay for Walker.

Favorite midwestern photographer(s): Since Alec Soth gets props elsewhere, I’ll make this one a tossup between Chicago’s Brian Ulrich, whose documentation of consumers in thrift shops and megastores teeter between religious devotion and blunt critique, and Minneapolis’ Paul Shambroom, who offers clinical and compelling portraits of Homeland Security-era America.

Under-reported story of the year: Darfur

If we all agree there’s genocide going on in Sudan, why isn’t more being done?

Bonus: Blogs You Should be Reading

Thanks for all the (credited and uncredited) webfinds: Greg.org, In Search of the Miraculous, The Daily Irrelevant, NEWSgrist, Fashion Incubator, TalkLeft, Design Observer, and reBlog.

THE FIVE BEST BOOKS OF 2006

Paul Schumacher, book buyer at the Walker Shop

1. Banksy: Wall and Piece: The most complete overview of witty and humorous politically charged street artist who uses stencil graffiti to cause controversy.

2. Robert Polidori: After the Flood: The oversize photography of Polidori captures a horrific tragedy in New Orleans that he makes this wreckage intriguing and beautiful to look at.

3. Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century: This Sagemeister-designed volume by the people behind the blog Worldchanging is packed with good ideas about everything from microfinance to non-toxic homebuilding, humanitarian architecture to citizen media.

4. Janet Cardiff: The Walk Book: A unique artist book that makes you feel like you’re on a Cardiff audio Walk seeing the urban environment of Paris, London and New York.

5. Painting People: Figure Painting Today: This collection of paintings by established and emerging artists creates an amazing representation of the unique ability within the last six years of capturing people.

TEN BEST DVDS OF 2006

Kathie Smith, Film/Video intern

Inevitably, the best DVD releases of the year are not going to be the “ special editions” of the films that played in theaters last year. The hidden gems in any given year will always be the result of where distributors choose to wave their magic wand on the huge backlog of films that have never gotten a domestic release in the US. The news is good, but not great. Film fans still have to rely on international DVDs to fill in the gaps, but things aren’t so bad here: we still have the likes of arthouse workhorse Criterion doing things the fancy-pants way, as well as a plethora of smaller distributors stepping up to the plate and taking some chances on films no one else will. I’ve tried to highlight a little of both, in what I feel are some of the best releases of the year.

Michael Haneke’s The Seventh Continent and Benny’s Video (1989/1992): Long overdue, these first two films from Haneke are a tour de force combo that have been virtually nonexistent anywhere in the world. Desperate fans spent top dollar on a VHS copy of The Seventh Continent from Facets, and then coughed up money for a worthless copy of Benny’s Video floating around on eBay.

Ishiro Honda’s Gojira aka Godzilla (1954): It turns out there was a good reason why the dubbed Raymond Burr Godzilla seemed so cheesy and stupid: because it was! The original, however, is a much more somber contemplation of post-war Japan with anti-American sentiments securely intact. The set contains the original and the 1956 re-cut US version.

Greenaway – The Early Films (1969-80): Settle in with a full pot of coffee and this two-disc set! Greenaway might be best known for his film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and such, but that’s not the whole story. Containing seven shorts and his epic film The Falls, these early films are the quintessence of Greenaway’s analytical meditative visual eloquence.

Seijun Suzuki’s Taisho Trilogy (Zigeunerweisen 1980, Kagero-za 1981, Yumeji 1991): After the Nikkatsu studio kicked his butt to the curb for Branded to Kill, Seijun Suzuki spent over a decade in filmmaking exile. The Taisho Trilogy (referring to the era in which they take place, 1912-1926) represents his triumphant return to film. All these films are rarely screened and rarely seen in the West.

Jane Campion’s Sweetie (1989): If you haven’t seen Sweetie, now’s the perfect time with this VIP DVD treatment from Criterion. If you have seen Sweetie, this edition offers up special features to make the second viewing even more rewarding: commentary with Campion, DoP Sally Bonger and screenwriter Gerald Lee, a “ making of” that includes a conversation between two leads Genevieve Lemon and Karen Colston, three early shorts from Campion, and 1989 conversation between Campion and critic Peter Thompson.

Béla Tarr’s Satantango (1994): For the love of God! Release this film! The DVD for this enigmatic seven-hour film was due out at the end of November, but alas, it has been postponed. I feel like I’m being punished. Let’s just pretend it came out, and let’s just pretend we can go rent it at the video store.

Peter Watkins’ La Commune/Edvard Munch/The War Game/Culloden (2001/1976/1965/1964): Fortunately Peter Watkins’ films are finding their way out of the vacuum. I find his blend of docu-drama filmmaking style utterly engaging and unique. La Commune (aka Paris Commune) is probably the best of the four released this year, but all are worth a look.

The Pinky Violence Collection: Far from canonical films, but this boxset contains some fantastic examples of the “ pinky violence” genre of Japanese films that can be best described as softcore with female protagonists. The titles in this set tells it all: Delinquent Girl Boss: Worthless to Confess (1972), Girl Boss Guerilla (1972), Terrifying Girls High School: Lynch Law Classroom (1973), and Criminal Woman: Killing Melody (1973). These are sexploitation films, for sure, and not everyone’s cup of tea, but I found these bad-girl films incredibly fun and an excellent contrast to all the yakuza dude films out there.

Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher Trilogy (1996/2004/2005): Hailing from Denmark, these films could have disappeared into nowhere. They are all three solid, gritty crime films that deserve a wider audience.

And finally, on my Christmas list, 50 Years of Janus Films. Fifty years, fifty films, 650 bucks. Mail to: Kathie Smith c/o Walker Art Center.

BEST OF ART AND CULTURE 2006

Alec Soth, photographer

1. Photography (book): My Life in Politics by Tim Davis

Davis is too smart to be a photographer. But his eye is too good to be anything else. A great book.

2. Photography (exhibition): Peter Hujar at PS1

One of my favorite photographers at one of my favorite places to look at art–does it get any better? Actually, yes. Stephen Shore’s American Surfaces was exhibited across the hall.

3. Photography (editorial): Taryn Simon, New York Times Magazine

Sometimes I come across work that is so good that it makes me downright jealous. This happened with the recent New York Times Magazine portfolio of new images by Taryn Simon from her project, An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar

4. Photography (website): Conscientious

Why does an astrophysicist in Pittsburgh have the most comprehensive information on new photography? Assuming astrophysics is more demanding than being a Starbucks barista, where does Jörg Colberg get the time?

5. Photography (single picture): Todd Heisler, Reno Airport

Heisler’s picture of a Marine being removed from a commercial plane beneath the gaze of fellow passengers was published in 2005 but not seen by most until 2006 when his project, Final Salute, won the Pulitzer Prize. This remarkable image is perhaps the best portrait of America in 2006 – the year we finally looked out the window (and in the mirror).

6. Painting: David Bates

In a year when dozens of fine-art photographers exhibited work from Katrina, the best art to come out of the disaster was made by a painter.

7. Radio: The David Johansen Mansion of Fun Show on Sirius Radio.

I do a lot of driving. I listen to a lot of radio. The former New York Dolls singer David Johansen is the best DJ ever.

8. Film: Sweet Land

Over the last year I only saw one movie in a theater… but it was a really good one. After 16 years of preparation, the Minnesota writer/director Ali Selim shot this film in 24 days. Unafraid of sentimentality with a real-life pace, this is a film to be savored.

9. Music: Solomon Burke, Nashville

Is Burke’s voice a moan, a wail, or a croon? Whichever it is, I understand why he sings in Valley of Tears, “ People stand in line just to hear me cry.”

10. Fiction: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

This year I listened to two audiobooks by Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006) and No Country for Old Men (2005). In both books McCarthy takes the thriller’ and strips it to the bone. The raw and urgent writing (along with the gravely voice of Tom Stechschulte) drives the listener into an almost subterranean universe. I don’t think I’ll ever get The Road out of my system.

Alas, the FBI’s list doesn’t include LACMA’s destruction of a mural by Barry McGee and the late Margaret Kilgallen in its soon-to-be-razed garage.