Walker Art Center Lines Up a Season of Exhibitions and Performances

The Walker Art Center, the contemporary art museum on the edge of Lowry Hill, has lined up a season of exhibitions and performances to go with its permanent collection and the adjoining Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The center has long been a national draw and a neighborhood institution at once.

The pairing of indoor galleries with the outdoor garden gives the Walker an unusual range, from ticketed exhibitions to the free, always-open sculpture grounds next door. Few museums offer both a serious contemporary program and a world-class public park as a front yard.

A season indoors and out

Inside, the Walker rotates through exhibitions, film and live performance across the year, drawing on a permanent collection that has made it one of the most respected contemporary art institutions in the country. The McGuire Theater and Walker Cinema add a performing-arts and film dimension that most visual-art museums lack, so a season ticket can mean a gallery show one week and a performance the next.

Outside, the eleven-acre Sculpture Garden stays free and open daily, anchored by the Spoonbridge and Cherry and dotted with more than sixty works. The contrast is the Walker's signature: pay to see the cutting-edge show indoors if you like, or simply wander the sculptures next door for nothing at all.

A neighborhood institution

For residents, the Walker is both a destination and a backdrop — the building on the hill that anchors the southern edge of the neighborhood and pulls visitors from across the region. Locals tend to hold it the way you hold a landmark you live beside: not always front of mind, but unmistakably part of the place, the thing out-of-town guests want to see and the easy answer to a rainy Saturday.

That double role — globally known museum, neighborhood fixture — is unusual and worth appreciating. The same institution that organizes touring exhibitions and hosts visiting artists is also the place a Kenwood family wanders into on a free Thursday evening. Few neighborhoods get to claim an art center of this stature as, effectively, the museum down the street.

Free ways in

The Walker keeps several no-cost doors open. The Sculpture Garden is free year-round; gallery admission is free on the first Saturday of each month and on Thursday evenings; and the garden's family programming runs free through the warm season. For a household watching its budget, that is a lot of access to serious art without a ticket — and a good argument for treating the Walker as a regular stop rather than a special occasion.