Sights, sounds and, if you press your nose really close to the screen, smells from the opening night of the Walker’s Summer Music & Movies series, with music from The Alarmists. The series continues every Monday, in Loring Park, through August 18.
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.
For 15 years or thereabouts, the Walker Art Center’s frame shop has held a one-day sale, open only to staffers, to clean house of the dozens of hand-built frames from exhibitions past that are no longer usable. The latest was Wednesday — and my first here on staff — and I was stunned to see loads of sturdy, elegant wood frames of varied sizes for less than $10. Bargain-conscious staffers streamed into the Cinema, cash in hand, when the doors to the Walker Cinema opened at 10 am (My rookie move: Leaving my wallet at my desk). The smallest frames, which are the most functional and practical on living room walls, were the first to go. Some staffers horded a dozen or more, squirreling them into a corner to measure them, before committing to the all-sales-are-final buy.
The Walker Art Center isn’t just a home for the best in contemporary art — it’s also available for rent. One tenant is the annual Push Institute Conference. PUSH 2008 (tagline: “The Fertile Delta”) attracted business leaders, politicians, artists, economists and others for two of inspiration and future-gazing. The conference — or at least the opening-night party — also attracted the intervention of Art for the People / Art on Wheels, a new course at the University of Minnesota led by Ali Momeni.
Look for Momeni and his students to roll-and-show somewhere during the 2008 Republican National Convention, through The UnConvention.
Former Walker director (and now director emeritus) Martin Friedman and his wife, Mickey, were at a reception in their honor Friday afternoon at the Gallery 8 Cafe. Just before the mass of staff poured in for free wine and crackers, Martin Friedman discussed his interactions 20 years ago with artists placing their works in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Friedman also talks here with Deborah Butterfield, who was also at the reception, about her work in the garden, Woodrow (1988).
part 1
part 2
I spent last weekend at the National Conference for Media Reform, at the Minneapolis Convention Center, where about 3,500 media activists, educators and entrepreneurs discussed policy, journalism, trends, and outlooks. Among them were several heroes of the reform movement — Bill Moyers, Amy Goodman, Arianna Huffington, Bob McChesney, more. They all appear in my two-part video report — my personal highlight is Dan Rather’s answer to my question at a press conference he gave Saturday.
What, you might ask, is the relevance to this blog? Your ability to access this (or any) blog depends, in large part, on the gatekeepers of the Internet. “Net neutrality” is the oh-so-sexy term for the guiding principle that preserves a free and open Internet. Here’s a little more detail from savetheinternet.org:
Put simply, Net Neutrality means no discrimination. Net Neutrality prevents Internet providers from speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination. Net Neutrality is the reason why the Internet has driven economic innovation, democratic participation, and free speech online. It protects the consumer’s right to use any equipment, content, application or service on a non-discriminatory basis without interference from the network provider. With Net Neutrality, the network’s only job is to move data — not choose which data to privilege with higher quality service.
The cause also dovetails into the Walker’s involvement with The UnConvention, a “non-partisan collective of citizens who have come together to create a forum in which to promote the democratic and free exchange of ideas on important issues.”
Swing into the opening party for Walker on the Green: Artist-Designed Mini Golf. The course is open through Labor Day.
Performances of Trisha Brown’s Planes happen on the half-hour between 11 am to 2 pm Saturday and 6 to 9 pm Thursday, in the Walker’s Medtronic Gallery, through the run of the exhibition of Brown’s drawings, So That the Audience Does Not Know Whether I Have Stopped Dancing. Here, three dancers perform at May’s Free First Saturday (about a dozen are on rotation in this trio) and, afterward, discuss the work.
The Walker unrolled its first Jewelry Artists Mart, in the Skyline Room, at Free First Saturday.
To commemorate National Dance Week, Walker Art Center performing arts program manager Michele Steinwald sent out a call to 300 people in the Twin Cities dance community to gravitate to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden Tuesday afternoon for a group photo in front of Spoonbridge and Cherry. Only two dozen showed up, not counting two dogs in tow, but Steinwald sees it as the launching pad to an annual photo shoot to mark this otherwise under-the-radar week.