Off Center

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).

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.

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.”

Anne d’Harnoncourt, chief executive of the Philadelphia Museum, died this morning unexpectedly. The New York Times called d’Harnoncourt “one of the art world’s most influential women.” She was 64.

D’Harnoncourt had risen from the museum’s curatorial ranks to become, in 1996, its chief executive. Lee Rosenbaum, who pens the CultureGrrl blog for Arts Journal, called d’Harnoncourt “a woman of grace, great distinction, contagious enthusiasm and, above all, warmth. A tremendous loss to the city to which she was a heroine, and to the art world for which she was a role model.”

The Philadelphia Museum’s relationship with the Walker manifested most recently in the Frida Kahlo exhibition, which just left Philadelphia on its way to San Francisco.

MinnPost has an interesting piece today from Ron Way, who mixes an assessment of Walker on the Green with a short history lesson on miniature golf. Among other “hmm … you don’t say?” nuggets, Way drops this factoid:

(The) first miniature golf course was the Ladies’ Putting Club in St. Andrews, Scotland, formed in 1867. Back then, it was taboo for women to swing a golf club more than shoulder high.

Some taboos are more meritorious than others. At least the Walker doesn’t discriminate with its taboos — anyone playing Walker on the Green will get a finger-wagging for swinging a club more than shoulder high.

Swing into the opening party for Walker on the Green: Artist-Designed Mini Golf. The course is open through Labor Day.

And I thought Chuck Close’s Big Self Portrait was huge…

The drawing above was created using a GPS unit housed in a briefcase that was shipped all over the world, creating a self-portrait of the artist spanning the entire globe.

via Eyeteeth.