Walker Art Center doubles size

Art in America, April, 2005 by Janet Koplos

On Apr. 17, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis opens a new south wing that doubles the museum's size, giving it a total of 260,000 square feet of programming and operating space (40,000 square feet of galleries). The expansion, designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, reorients the museum with a main entrance facing a major street, Hennepin Avenue, rather than the museum's sculpture garden.

The new wing's exterior is covered with embossed aluminum-mesh panels that subtly change appearance with weather conditions and viewing angle. That adds street appeal to the building, as do asymmetric windows and a 60-foot-long, etched-glass section of the facade that will feature informative video projections related to exhibitions and events. These active qualities contrast with the brown-brick minimalist masses of the existing 1971 Edward Larrabee Barnes building. Old and new buildings are linked by a low indoor plaza (punctuated by 20-foot-high windows) that slopes to match the grade of the street.

The revised and expanded museum, with 33 percent more exhibition space, includes a new 385-seat performance venue for dance, music and theater; a remodeled cinema for film and new media; and a restaurant operated by Wolfgang Puck. Besides designated audio and video areas, an information lounge features an interactive digital media table that accommodates several people at once; users can manipulate images and texts by means of simple hand gestures.

With the demolition of the Guthrie Theater building, which shares an entrance lobby with the Walker, the museum will add a 4-acre garden to its 17-acre campus (the theater opens in a new Jean Nouvel building along the Mississippi riverbank downtown in June 2006). Seven inaugural exhibitions focus on works from the museum's collection, which has grown by 40 percent in the last decade. The Walker has raised $85 million in its $92-million capital campaign, with $24.5 million of the total for endowment and operating funds.