Minneapolis news: the most wide-ranging contemporary art museum outside New York has just opened a bold new extension. But, asks Louise Nicholson, does the Walker's addition really work?

A number of American museums are opening sparkling new buildings this year or have the bulldozers working to a future finish line. They will be landmarks for their cities--but how well will they serve their collections or their public? These thoughts emerged during a visit to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, whose new extension, by Herzog & de Meuron, opened on 17 April.

The Walker is one of America's more important museums. Its stock of contemporary art is considered second only to MOMA'S, as is its remarkable film archive. The collection surged forward thanks to director Daniel Defenbacher, who in the late 1930s concluded that a museum should be somewhere the 'average man' could 'discover that art was not part of some timeless realm outside daily life, but a vital force that was alive and in action'. This 'vital force' could be found in almost all media, from industrial design to dance and literature.

To that end, most of T.B. Walker's diverse foundation collection (opened to the public in 1897 as the first public gallery west of the Mississippi) was sold or returned to his family. Over the past sixty years, Defenbacher and three subsequent directors have amassed more than 13,000 works, forty per cent of them under the current dynamic director, Kathy Halbreich. They fall into four categories: the permanent collection of visual art; film and video; digital; and a library of artists' books and multiples. Each reflects the museum's commitment to commissioning and collecting innovative works. An example: the permanent collection's 11,000 works span the careers of Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Joan Mitchell and Robert Motherwell; these four artists are currently the subject of one inaugural exhibition. A second example: the Edmond R. Ruben film and video collection of more than 800 titles ranges from early treasures by the Lumiere brothers to Harry Smith's Mahagonny, a screen translation of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's opera. And a third: the museum's notable performance arts programme has included a Merce Cunningham dance, Walkaround Time, with sets (currently on show) commissioned from Jasper Johns.

Accosting the new

This formidable institution sits on an eleven-acre mid-city campus that includes a mature sculpture garden dotted with works by Henry Moore, Richard Serra, Kinji Akagawa, Sarah Sze and others. It is much used and much loved--seventy per cent of its visitors are local, and its outreach, educational and teenage programmes are extensive and impressive.

A few years ago the Walker decided to enlarge. The commission for its extension was precise: bring in more light, emphasise the museum's multidisciplinary nature, create a social meeting place for the city, and set a mood 'to accost the new', as Halbreich put it, with gusto. 'Convergence is the buzzword--of disciplines, education and people'. In responding precisely to this, Herzog & de Meuron have triumphed over the challenge of adding to Edward Larrabee Barnes's much-respected but introspective 1960s brick building that contains a spiral of windowless rooms. Their solution was to continue the spiral outwards with more galleries, adding lounge areas, plenty of windows and finishing the internal walls with light-reflecting polished plaster. A dramatic cube clad with sheets of embossed, undulating aluminium cuts into this structure and contains the restaurant (where the chocolate desert imitates Claes Oldenberg's Spoonbridge and Cherry sculpture outside). New, too, is the big cinema screen, 385-seat theatre, educational areas and terraces. Thomas Gluck, the project manager, sums it up: 'The Barnes building is so good that we have taken all our cues from it. We took something that worked well and simply refined it.'

What, then, is the problem? It is this: the new extension simply seems too small to respond to its exceptional collection and the enthusiasm of its public. Gallery space is doubled, but this merely increases the stock on show from a tiny two per cent to just five per cent of the permanent collection. Yet there is site space enough and, on Halbreich's admission, fundraising from businesses headquartered in thriving Minneapolis is not difficult. As to the exceptional film archive, the new extension has just one banquette with three video screens. Yet technology would now allow for a roomful of screens and on-demand selection by the visitor from the full museum catalogue, at a fairly cheap price.

Following the artists?

It could be argued that the curator's view is more important than the consumer's. Joan Rothfuss, curator for the Walker's permanent collection, is thrilled by the extension. Herzog & de Meuron were, she believes, the perfect choice. They provided flexibility and neutrality, with no distractions. 'You can't really tell how a plan will come out, but it is wonderful. We wanted workable, useable, beautiful spaces, and we have got them'. She particularly rates the architects' decision to continue the Barnes building's unobtrusive terrazzo floors into the new spaces.