The Walker’s Open Field Projects

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The Walker Art Center is a museum that focuses on art from the nineteen sixties through today. The center has created a blog called Open Field Projects to keep track of all their different large scale art pieces that are being hosted at their facility. The most recent project was created by the German artist Joseph Beuys and it was titled “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare”.

This artwork was made in 1978 when Beuys began to talk about this piece for six hours straight, and he talked about his life and things he had been involved in. He then tied two dead hares to stakes and left them there for a hundred days. He wanted people to think about the way art is described, and how words can be used to explain a piece of art. The first thing that needs to be done is to take away any preconceived notions of what art should look like, or how it should make people feel.

The Walker Open Field is a blog dedicated to the different large-scale public art projects that are hosted at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. The blog is updated regularly with new content and photos of the work as it progresses, so you can keep up with what’s going on at the Walker Open Field.

In addition to posting content directly related to the Walker Open Field, we post articles and interviews about other public art projects taking place around the country and around the world. We also share content from other blogs, news outlets and publications focusing on contemporary art and architecture.

One of the main goals of our blog is to engage with our readers by posing questions which encourage thoughtful responses. We hope these discussions will stimulate thought about how public art fits within an urban environment. The conversations may help you think about how your own community engages with public art, or even how you engage with it yourself.

More than anything else, we want our readers to be involved in the process. The projects we present are commissioned by our audience, and they will have an opportunity to interact with them here before and after they go up in Minneapolis.

We’re excited to announce that the Walker’s Open Field Projects blog is now live!

This new blog, which is co-curated by Walker Art Center and the National Endowment for the Arts, features a rotating panel of guest bloggers who will share stories and images from Open Field projects they have visited as well as information about upcoming events. The first guest blogger is event curator Sarah Herda. She was recently in Portugal and shares her insights on the Open Field event there.

Tune in to learn more about this exciting series, the process of creating an Open Field space for artists and partners, and how you can get involved!

About Open Field Projects:

In October 2012, a group of artists from diverse disciplines were selected to create site-specific works at Walker Art Center as part of a groundbreaking national arts initiative called Open Fields. The project is traveling to five additional sites across the country in 2013. Each year, six to eight artists will be invited to create site-specific work at these partner institutions that will engage audiences with the local landscape. The goal is to expand public knowledge of contemporary art, catalyze new ideas and collaborations, foster community engagement, and increase museum visitation at each participating institution.*”'(From website)

We are a contemporary art center, as well as a museum, and our mission is to be an innovator in the presentation of contemporary art. Over the years we have developed a history of being on the frontlines of contemporary practices. We believe that contemporary art is important in its own right, but also that it is vital for our community and for understanding the world around us.

Today, we work with artists and organizations from all over the world to create Open Field Projects (OFPs), which bring together artists from many disciplines to create new works in Minneapolis and throughout the region. We expand traditional notions of what an art museum can do by creating opportunities for artists to experiment with their practice, engage with their audiences, and connect to our community.

We are excited to bring this new perspective on exhibition making to our home in downtown Minneapolis. In 2011 Walker Art Center will move into its current location overlooking the Mississippi River and downtown Minneapolis. This new building will allow us to continue our tradition of supporting contemporary practices through innovative programming that builds bridges between artists, audiences, and communities.

The first Open Field Project at the Walker was Olafur Eliasson’s Sunrise/Sunset, which opened in 2005. The project is a collection of 24 hour-long video projections placed in various locations on the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The videos are projected from six different buildings onto the ground, walls, trees and fountains of the sculpture garden. It seems to be nearly impossible to view all of them each day as they are not played in order, except for some special installations that were created specifically for the project.

The second major Open Field Project was a series called “Blur: New Positions in Painting” by Robert Irwin and James Turrell. The collection features both new and historical paintings that blur the distinction between painting and sculpture. They are installed in six different galleries throughout the Walker’s buildings.

The most recent Open Field Project was “Cosmosophy-the Art of Peter Coffin” by Peter Coffin that was on display from September 7, 2013 through January 5, 2014. Coffin is famous for his use of color and light to create sculptures that seem to be made out of pure energy. His Cosmosophy collection featured 33 sculptures, seven of which were interactive pieces that allowed museum goers to interact with them via sensors located on each piece

The Walker Art Center is a Minneapolis museum that has a relatively small permanent collection but hosts regular temporary exhibitions of contemporary art. It also features a large sculpture garden and a number of outdoor sculptures. The museum’s website features links to many of the different exhibitions it has hosted, as well as to its permanent collection.

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