Crowds Greet New Walker Art Center

MINNEAPOLIS - One could see it from the airplane as it circled for a landing in Minneapolis the gleaming silver box on Hennepin Avenue that is the new Herzog + de Meuron-designed addition to the Walker Art Center. The much-anticipated $70 million new building and refurbished existing minimalist brick structure built by Edward Larrabee Barnes in 1971 opened last weekend to generally rave reviews from the art world and Minneapolis residents alike.

Banners for the new building lined the streets in downtown Minneapolis "The New Walker: Introduce Yourself." At least one artwork has long been something of a trademark of the city Claes Oldenburg's monumental cherry poised on a monumental spoon, looking as though about to be launched, sits outside the Walker; its image graces soda machines in the airport.

Before the public was admitted to the new Walker, the museum hosted a series of events for art world VIPs. In a packed itinerary that echoed the frenzied social schedule surrounding such international art world events as the Art Basel Miami Beach fair, VIP guests of the Walker referred to in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press as "celebrities" were driven round on buses to various parties, as well as to the homes of no fewer than seven local collectors, all actively involved in the privately funded Walker. (The city has a long history of individual philanthropy, long led by Judy and the late Kenneth Dayton of Dayton Hudson, predecessor of the Target stores.) On hand for the opening weekend were such leaders in the field as Chicago MCA curator Francesco Bonami; LA MoCA director Jeremy Strick and curator Paul Schimmel; Whitney Museum director Adam Weinberg; David Gordon, director of the Milwaukee Art Museum; New York gallerists Matthew Marks and Andrea Rosen; San Francisco-based video art collectors Pamela and Richard Kramlich; and artist Matthew Barney with his wife, pop star Bjork. The international contingent included Art Basel director Sam Keller, Italian collector Patricia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo; peripatetic independent curator Hans Ulrich Obrist; dealer Jay Jopling, and Jan Debbaut, Director of Collections at Tate.

It wasn't just the architectural clout of Herzog + de Meuron responsible for London's Tate Modern and the Goetz Collection in Munich that brought them. It was also the Walker's longstanding reputation as an innovative contemporary art center on par with other international institutions. Many important artists, including Barney, have premiered works at the Walker. Echoing the sentiments of many contemporary art museum professionals present, Marti Mayo, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, said, "The Walker has always been the place to look to, first under Martin Friedman" its director from 1961 to 1991 "and then under Kathy Halbreich," its present director.

One of the weekend's highlights was a tour through the galleries with Jacques Herzog of Herzog + de Meuron. Gesturing at an irregularly shaped window, blocked by a tent erected for the opening party that night, he said one of the goals of the new building was to open up views of the city. He also pointed to two "languages" at work in the building, one being its crumpled paper-like aluminum façade, and the other the floral pattern developed for the theater, a decorative touch, or ornamental "coat." (In his review of the building, LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorn characterized them as part of a "thus far tentative decorative revival in architecture - call it ornament creep.")

The architects gave the walls in the public spaces and hallways connecting galleries a shiny surface made from plaster and marble dust that seems to glisten, as though wet. Hanging in these spaces are large chandeliers made from pieces of glass from glass production; the dangerous-looking clusters of jagged shards were suspended from the ceiling only after careful testing for safety.

Along these walkways are nooks that house audio or visual stations for viewing animations or listening to sound art. One sound project is Walker-expansion-specific: Christian Marclay made a work of art from merely the ambient sounds of the building's construction. The tour included a stop by the Walkers new $10 million, 385-seat theater, where avant-garde composer Philip Glass was doing a soundcheck for his performance later that day. The Walker prides itself on its contributions to avant-garde music and performance; Glass himself has performed there a number of times. With the black-on-black pattern on its walls, the theater has a touch of the ornate; Herzog says he modeled it partly on the famous La Scala opera house in Milan. "In Modernism theaters have lost their magic," he said.