No visit to Minneapolis is complete for me without a trip to the Walker Art Center, one of the most esteemed and most risk-taking and original of all contemporary art museums in the US. My arts education as a graduate student in Minnesota way back when was heavily influenced by the Walker; it was here that I first encountered Chuck Close and Robert Rauschenberg, and I remembered sitting through a screening here of Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book delirious with wonder at the craziness that Greenaway brazenly put on film (including unabashedly admiring shots of Ewan MacGregor’s, shall we say, ah, uhmmm, prodigious, non-acting, assets). As soon as I got off the plane in Minneapolis last Wednesday, friends and random strangers were telling me to run and see the Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Walker. So off I went, and then found out, disappointingly, that there was an hour and fifteen minute wait to get into the Kahlo galleries. As I gazed with dismay at the sea of Minnesotans in their wool sweaters embroidered with various forms of flaura and fauna, patiently waiting, I decided, unless Salma Hayek was inside in her Frida costume and unibrow, that no way in hell would I be waiting an hour in line for anything. So I wandered through the other Walker galleries and literally stumbled into their phenomenal, meticulously curated survey of international contemporary art called “Brave New Worlds”. No amount of Frida, or Salma for that matter, could have been as dazzling and intellectually satisfying to me as this exhibit was.
Nov 26
Recent Comments