Off Center

In March, my girlfriend and I decided to get married. Neither of us were keen on the idea of a long engagement and a complicated wedding planning process. After some consultation with family on availability, Memorial day weekend was our time.

The short timeframe (just over two months) left us with more limited options for location. We initially looked at getting married in the Cowles Conservatory, but it was booked for the dates we wanted. While scouting other locations in the Sculpture Garden and Loring Park, the idea of having the wedding in James Turrell’s Sky Pesher occurred to us. The seed was perhaps planted by the Skyscape/Soundscape concert series happening in Sky Pesher over the summer. After checking with our registration department, we had the OK to get married in the artwork.

Our photographer, Kimberlee Whaley sent us a few initial pictures, which I’ve posted to flickr. And some of my new family also blogged about our wedding and posted photos.

We were initially worried that 30 people would be close quarters, but thankfully everyone was able to sit on the benches surrounding us during our ceremony. To the best of my knowledge, no one has been married in Sky Pesher before. We liked it as a location for the wedding. My wife and I are not religious, but there is a sanctity and spirtuality to the space. My wife is studying to become a landscape architect, so a connection to the earth is a big part of both of our lives right now.

After the wedding ceremony, we quickly ducked into the Sculpture Garden and got the necessary Spoonbridge and Cherry wedding shot, with jumping:

We kept things relatively casual and fun, having a delicious dinner at Azia, followed by bowling at Memory Lanes. In between dinner and bowling, a number of our guests slipped back to Sky Pesher to see the lights change at sunset:

Photo by Lisa Longley

Despite the fact that we got married there, my wife and I had never seen a sunrise or sunset in Sky Pesher. After all our guests had left town on Monday and we came back to see it for ourselves. The optical illusion of the sky descending into the space is subtle, but stunning, and it was the perfect way to cap a great weekend.

Without a vehicle like “American Idol” to discover the next great voice-over talent, programmers at the Walker turned to their own colleagues to pluck the voice for upcoming radio spots to promote the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s Ocean. Here’s a glimpse from the casting couch at Wednesday’s auditions.

Walker assistant curator Yasmil Raymond juried Open Door 4, the the fourth annual juried exhibition at Rosalux Gallery, an artist-run co-op, at Open Book in Minneapolis.

Raymond sifted through more than 200 entries to select 15 artists for this show: Matt Bakkom, Greg Carideo, Sarah Christianson, Jennifer Danos, Jan Estep, Gregory Euclide, Mark Fisher, Luisa F. Garcia Gomez, Caroline Kent, Janet Lobberecht, Jennifer Nevitt, Tim Roby, Chad Rutter, Tony Sunder and Aaron Van Dyke. Bakkom recently mentored teens from the Walker’s Teen Arts Council on their Collections Project.

Opening reception for Open Door 4 is 7-10 pm Saturday. The exhibition is up through June 29.

Walker Deputy Director and Chief Curator Philippe Vergne is lending his perspective and voice to a June 12 panel discussion on the current and future states of the arts in Minnesota. Free to the public, the discussion is 5:30 pm at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Joining Vergne at a long table are Kaywin Feldman (executive director, Minneapolis Institute of Arts), Jocelyn Hale (executive director, Loft Literary Center), Lily Schwartz (director of Pops and Special Projects, Minnesota Orchestra), John Miller-Stephany (associate artistic director, Guthrie Theater), and Vickie Benson (McKnight Foundation program director for the arts). Moderating is FOX9 news anchor Robyne Robinson.

Expect some back-and-forth (mostly forth) about the “Vote Yes” ballot initiative — more formally known as the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment. The Walker is among many arts (i.e. cultural legacy) institutions advocating the measure, which calls for amending the Minnesota state constitution to add and dedicate three-eighths of a cent on every dollar of taxable sales (think three extra pennies for every $10 you spend at retail) to environmental, outdoors, sporting and arts organizations.

If recent history is an indication, those extra pennies would add up to about $300 million each year (19.25 percent of that will go toward arts/culture). State and regional arts councils would administer the arts funding, redistributing it through existing grant programs. The rest goes to protect, enhance, and/or restore Minnesota’s drinking water sources, wetlands, prairies, forests, lakes, rivers, steams, and groundwater, wildlife habitat, and parks and trails.

On the surface, the arts might seem the round peg on the square board. After all, where else would you find painters and hunters in the grip of solidarity? But proponents are wrapping all the interests into one pitch slogan: “Protect the Minnesota you love.” And who can argue with clean water?

The Walker is asking you to join Vergne in November by saying Vote Oui.

Last week I was interviewed on Flak Radio, the weekly podcast for Flak Magazine. I sat down with James Norton and Taylor Carik to discuss The UnConvention. If you’re confused about what that is, the podcast is a good way to find out.

Also discussed: Taylor Carik as the Twin Cities best Twin Cities blogger, mnspeak as the best local website, presidential trivia, agricultural land masses, GTA IV, and the only bird can fly backwards (hint: not a pelican).

Are we alone in the universe?

Do aliens exist?

Or are we, ourselves, the strangers in our own worlds?

Answers to these questions aren’t posed only at the Roswell UFO Museum and Research Center. They also bubble up in Life on Mars, the theme for the 55th annual Carnegie International — America’s most enduring contemporary art exhibition. Former Walker curator Douglas Fogle, now curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, organized what he describes as a “collective self-portrait of humanity colliding with the economic and political events that define daily existence.”

Given the theme, it’s unsurprising that among the nearly 40 artists represented here, the vast majority are men, including Doug Aitken, Bruce Conner, and Paul Thek. In this video interview with WDUQ-90.5FM, Fogle calls the title — the first Carnegie International exhibition to bear one — “a metaphor about other worlds. The best contemporary art takes you to other worlds.” The exhibition opens Saturday and flies to another galaxy January 2009.

How would you spend a perfect day in Minneapolis? This is a question Walker Teen Programs Manager Witt Siasoco answered in a two-page spread in Giant Robot, the fantastic Asian pop culture magazine. Like any good day, it starts with coffee and breakfast, followed by a mysteriously short one-hour workday. There are scans of the article up here: page 1, page 2.

This installment has Andrew Blauvelt, the Walker’s design director, showing how he organized the exhibitionWorlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes,which opens February 16.

Frida Kahlo drew thousands for its closing weekend, and Walker technicians took the show down Monday and Tuesday without an audience. Take a peek at the final patch of work that went into this exhibition.

Kara Walker installing her exhibition at the Walker Art Center in 2007.

The Walker’s exhibition Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love has won one of the museum industry’s most prestigious honors — “best monographic museum show,” by the International Association of Art Critics/USA Awards.

The awards, the art world’s equivalent to those given by the New York Film Critics Circle and the Drama Desk, recognize artists, curators, critics, scholars, cultural institutions, museums, and galleries nationally for their contributions to the field. A ceremony for the honors is March 17 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

Curated by Walker Deputy Director and Chief Curator Philippe Vergne and Assistant Curator Yasmil Raymond, the exhibition has received wide critical attention since premiering at the Walker in spring 2007, including cover stories in Art in America and Artforum, and features in New Yorker, The New York Times, Art+Auction, and W. In addition, the American Institute of Graphic Arts cited the catalogue cover in its annual 50 Books/50 Covers. Kara Walker was named last spring to “ The Time 100” among “ people who shape our world.”

Here is the complete list of award winners for 2006/2007:

BEST MONOGRAPHIC MUSEUM SHOW

First place: Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love. Organized for the Walker Art Center. Curator: Philippe Vergne and Yasmil Raymond

Second Place (tie): Rudolf Stingel. Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Curator: Francesco Bonami; A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s. Organized by the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Curator: Constance Lewallen

BEST THEMATIC MUSEUM SHOW NATIONALLY

First place: The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection. Organized by the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin. Curator: Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro.

Second Place: WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution. Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Curator: Connie Butler

BEST MONOGRAPHIC MUSEUM SHOW (NEW YORK CITY)

First Place: Gordon Matta-Clark: You are the Measure. Organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art. Curator: Elizabeth Sussman

Second Place: Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years. Organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Curators: Kynaston McShine and Lynne Cooke

BEST THEMATIC MUSEUM SHOW (NEW YORK CITY)

First Place: Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s. Organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Curator: Sabine Rewald, Jacques and Natasha Gelman

Second Place: Ecotopia: The Second ICP Triennial of Photography and Video. Organized by the International Center of Photography. Curators: Brian Wallis, Christopher Phillips, Edward Earle, Carol Squiers, Joanna Lehan

BEST SHOW IN A COMMERCIAL GALLERY (NEW YORK CITY)

Daughters of New York DADA. Organized by the Francis F. Naumann Fine Art

BEST SHOW IN A COMMERCIAL GALLERY

John Baldessari. Organized by Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles

BEST SHOW BY AN ALTERNATIVE SPACE or SMALLER ORGANIZATION

First Place: Moving Pictures. Organized by Williams College Museum of Art. Curator: Nancy Mowll Mathews

Second Place: High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975. Organized by Independent Curators International. Guest curator Katy Siegel with David Reed advisor

BEST SHOW IN A PUBLIC SPACE

Anish Kapoor: Sky Mirror. Rockefeller Center, New York. Organized by the Public Art Fund

BEST ARCHITECTURE or DESIGN SHOW

First Place: Poiret: King of Fashion. Organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Curators: Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton

Second Place: Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Curator: Brooke Hodge

BEST HISTORICAL SHOW

First Place: Manet and the Execution of Maximilian. Organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Curator: John Elderfield

Second Place: Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth, and History. Organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Curators: by Carmen Giménez and Francisco Calvo Serraller

BEST EXHIBITION OF TIME-BASED ART (VIDEO, FILM, or PERFORMANCE)

Joan Jonas: The Shape, The Scent, The Feel Of Things. Organized by Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York, NY