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HGA’s renovation and expansion unifies the Walker Art Center

2018-01-30T14:10:00-05:00

As part of their 75th anniversary, the Walker Art Center unified its 19-acre campus with renovations by HGA. The new museum design features a bold new entry pavilion, a renovated lobby, and improved access points throughout the museum.

Walker Art Center, located in Minneapolis, renovation by HGA. Image: Paul Crosby Photography.

HGA's design focused on an understated exterior to fit with the existing buildings. Design principal Joan Soranno stated, “Architecturally, the buildings are very different from each other. The Walker didn’t want a third architectural expression. Our expansion had to be compatible and harmonious with what was already there.”

Walker Art Center, located in Minneapolis, renovation by HGA. Image: Paul Crosby Photography.

The Walker Art Center now boasts easier navigation throughout the museum, a design hiding the mechanical guts, and "destination-worthy" dining.

Wal...

Aesthetic Radicalism and the Counterculture

2015-11-02T12:42:00-05:00

Herbert Marcuse, who in his book One-Dimensional Man, which was widely influential in the counterculture, argued that advanced industrial society creates an uncritical consumerism that it uses to orchestrate social control as it integrates or binds the working class to endless cycles of both production and consumption.

"The basic themes of anticonsumerism can be found in One-Dimensional Man: over-identification and symbolic reliance on consumer goods for personal satisfaction, the creation of desire and the fulfillment of wants instead of basic needs, the irrational expenditure of labor in pursuit of continuous consumption, the waste and environmental damage sustained in order to produce such goods, and the corresponding illogic of planned obsolescence. The inherent multidimensionality of the individual and one’s experience is thus eroded, and with it the capacity for critical thought and opposition. Following the austerity of the Great Depression and the sacrifices of World War II, America’s postwar economic boom and its ascent as a global superpower created an impression of abundance, no matter how unevenly it was actually distributed in society, fueled by technological and scientific advancements—so much so, that it was even possible to proclaim an impending “post-scarcity” society. That plenit...

Walker Art Center goes green in $75 million project

2015-03-30T15:37:00-04:00

Positioning itself as a neighborhood green space and cultural gateway, Walker Art Center will add a new glass-walled entrance pavilion, groves of trees and acres of new grass as part of a $75 million project to be announced Tuesday.

Mildred Friedman, 85, Dies; Curator Elevated Design and Architecture

2014-09-11T13:10:00-04:00

Mildred Friedman, a curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in the 1970s and ’80s who helped both the museum and the contemporary design and architecture it celebrated become objects of international acclaim, died on Sept. 3 in Manhattan. She was 85. [...] Ms. Friedman executed a curatorial hat trick: She elevated design even as she made it more accessible — and she did it in Minnesota, far from the traditional sanctums of aesthetics.