Make Sense of This: Visitors Respond to the Walker’s Collection

Make Sense of This: Visitors Respond to the Walker’s Collection is an exploratory exhibition that invites visitors to share feedback, fostering a dialogue with audiences in order to impact future Walker shows. The presentation is organized in four chapters that unfold over a period of nine months. Each new rotation offers a compelling grouping of works drawn from the Walker’s collection, spanning different mediums and time periods while centering on a specific theme.​

Featuring a selection of paintings, photographs, and sculptures, the first chapter focuses on portraits. Together, the works on view consider how diverse lived experiences find expression in artistic depictions of family, friends, and artists themselves. Other chapters take a closer look at the connections between music and visual art, notions of memory and commemoration, and ways that today’s artists push the boundaries of art movements from the past, such as 1970s Minimalism.

With each chapter, visitors are invited to respond to a set of questions about the artworks, the gallery texts, and more, using a touch screen in the gallery. This short, anonymous survey is offered in four languages—English, Spanish, Somali, and Hmong—reflecting the most spoken languages in the Twin Cities. A series of in-person workshops with invited groups will also be held in the space. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, visitors’ accumulating responses will be on real-time display, revealing a composite view of ideas, opinions, and preferences.

Make Sense of This intends to initiate a series of conversations that open up the curatorial process and ask people to provide feedback on how they read the works on view. Through this, the exhibition aims to shine a light on the formal, material, and historical considerations curators take into account when organizing exhibitions and demonstrates some of the many ways to present and understand works of art.

CHAPTER 1: Portrait and Lived Experience  /  February 18–April 16

CHAPTER 2: Minimal Art and the Measure of the Body  /  April 22–June 25

CHAPTER 3: Remembrance and Commemoration  /  July 1–August 27

CHAPTER 4: A Piece of Music  /  September 2–November 19

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website