Author: rakemag

After a year of observing the construction at Walker Art Center as artistic spectacle–the slow-dancing crane, the scaffolding-as-sculpture, the huge, billowing plastic tarps–we’re as excited as the next guy to finally revisit the museum proper. Of course, the expansion, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, promises to be spectacular in its own right (see The Rakish Angle, page 19), boosting the glamour quotient of an already impressive institution. But we’re also eager to say hello to old friends from the Walker’s permanent collection, and to see a host of new wonders, now that the museum has doubled its gallery space. Richard Flood, the Walker’s deputy director and chief curator, and Philippe Vergne, its senior curator (pictured with Walker colleagues), tell us what we can look forward to.

THE RAKE: We’ve been hearing a lot of talk about “conversation” when it comes to the Walker expansion. What do you mean by that word?

Richard Flood: In the [original] Larabee Barnes building, there was no place to talk other than the cafe. Now the museum is modeled on the town square, and it has circulation patterns that end up in lounges, where you can sit and have conversation. There are tables where you can bring your computer, or go through Walker catalogs. There are discreet spaces where you can sit and listen to music that’s been commissioned by the performing arts department. There’s a lot of space for community engagement.

Philippe Vergne: Also, for the first time, the museum is totally open to the city, so there is a real conversation between the urban landscape and the museum. The other conversation that is happening is that art is conversing with art. Several exhibitions we curated from the permanent collection show a very interesting conversation between works, between artists, and between disciplines.

THE RAKE: Will people see new parts of the permanent collection?

RF: Yes. The core of the Barnes galleries is given over to a chronology that begins in the 1950s and covers American abstract expressionism and the wonderful paintings we have from that period. As you proceed through the galleries, you begin to see a larger international dialogue about painting, becoming a conversation that also includes notions about the third dimension. You see paintings literally turning into sculpture as European art is introduced. There’s a gallery called American Standard, where you have a discussion about pop art, but it also shows the power of pop to influence other expressions in art. And then you have a room of 1980s paintings, because we thought it was very interesting to have a moment where you go from everybody’s understanding of postwar painting to where you see that idea being reformatted for a new century.

THE RAKE: What do you think characterizes the art of the early twenty-first century?

RF: For me, the early 2000s remind me of the mid-to-late 1980s, when everyone became aware of AIDS, and there was a sense of crisis in art. All of a sudden, drawing became incredibly important. People were working incredibly fast and economically to make their work and get it out. Now we’re back at a moment when you’re seeing drawing becoming dominant again. You’re seeing art that reflects a state of emergency.

PV: I think when you go through the studios of every young artist, there is a level of consciousness, and flexibility, and a position that their work can make a difference. It’s not unlike the mid-to-late sixties movements that were socially and politically involved. There are questions about our time that are being raised in the work of young artists now. Most visitors are unfamiliar with the work that curators do.

THE RAKE: What made you pursue curatorial work, as opposed to making art yourselves? Or are you also artists?

RF: No! Thank God. We’re not distracted by that. For a certain personality, there’s nothing more exciting than looking at art, thinking about art, and attempting to create situations in which the art tells a larger story about the time we live in. Curators look at each work as a messenger of the larger culture, and you can see worlds form around you when working with these individual pieces.

PV: It’s a profession that has the luxury of being almost self-defined. It’s animated by passion. And also, there are models that many of us look to, like Harald Szeemann, who just passed away. He had been working since the late 1960s and really helped define what “curator” means today.

RF: He was a giant. He opened up what previously had been a field where curators were essentially specialists, in really limited and defined areas. And he said, “That’s not the point.” He was a generalist, and his exhibitions were visual essays that always had at their center larger issues.

THE RAKE: What do you two want to be known for as curators?

RF: For that!

PV: Exactly.

In the world of relationship “deal breakers,” money matters, drug issues, and infidelity tend to overshadow what I consider to be the real compatibility issues. Starting with a biggie: ultimate control over the thermostat. If, like me, you are a fresh-air fiend and need windows cracked in subzero weather, you’d best pair up with someone of the same body temperature. While he’s running for a sweater in July, are you the type who will eat cereal or takeout rather than light the oven in September? If you’re both under sixty-five and the expression “Are we paying to heat the outdoors?” comes up, it’s best to re-examine things and start planning your escape route. Another deal breaker is footwear. A coworker posed this quandary: What if you were dating Johnny Depp, and he knew how much you loathed hippie accessories, so he got rid of his sandals–would you still dump him? As I see it, if Depp at one time bought Jerusalem cruisers, chances are he tried them on, admired the many useless straps in the shin-height mirror at the Horde Fest shoe tent, and bought ’em. Case closed. He probably also has a hacky sack stashed somewhere, and really, how could I get past that? Breaker number three: Have you ever had a really smart boyfriend who tried to defend the “sexiness” of some celebrity skank ho? When your otherwise enlightened man starts pointing out the long list of “positives” in Tara Reid, question everything you ever thought you knew about him. Other things to consider: Will he watch Project Runway and AmericaÕs Next Top Model with you without irony? Does he pretend to not like one of your cats, but youÕve secretly caught him using the “Does kitty want a treat?” voice when he thought you weren’t in the room? Got a keeper. I guess the upshot of this should be that, despite all of these things, you’re still in love and accepting of who he is. And that’s what real love is. But this isn’t Redbook and I’m far too shallow to say something like that.

Email Mary at popularcreeps@yahoo.com

Depending on how much snow we get in March, the year’s snowiest month, April can be one of the ugliest seasons. The yard is too soft to clean up, so the grimy leavings of winter are everywhere to be seen. On the upside, this is one of our favorite times of the year, because the woods are naked. Before the world remembers to bloom again, and after the drifts have melted, we like to look for ancient junk piles along country roads.

Collecting old beer cans is a peculiar hobby, but not really that odd, when you consider it as a form of low-rent treasure hunting. Yes, one person’s worthless garbage is another’s extra special garbage, and we enjoy having an excuse to get out and fiddle around in the woods even before the first hepatica and bloodroot bloom. Minnesota is actually a fine place for “canning,” and there is at least one chapter of collectors here that specialize in “rustlings”—more or less worthless cans that have value only in the eyes of the dirty-kneed treasure hunter, and bear no real relationship to the mint-condition cans that others discover in attics and garages, well away from the elements.

At the time when beer was first canned, in the 1930s, Minnesota had a brewery in nearly every city. Today, if you find a Kato beer can, or a Kiewel’s, or a Red Wing—among the Schmidt’s, Grain Belts, and Blatz—you’ve found something quite special.

These old cans are becoming rarer, of course, because they are disintegrating in the forest, helped along in their return to dust by the two hundred thousand tons of salt that are spread on Minnesota roads each winter. There is something pleasing and reassuring about these old tin cans in the woods, precisely because of their slow decay—ashes to ashes, rust to rust. They underscore the ugliness of plastic and aluminum, which appear to last forever, until someone literally removes them. Ten-year-old bleach bottles and diet Coke cans have not yet found a market among collectors.

Thankfully, aluminum is relatively rare in the woods, for one simple reason: Aluminum is the single biggest success story in the short history of recycling. Today, more than one in every two aluminum cans is recycled. Smelting recycled aluminum cans uses ninety-five percent less energy than smelting raw aluminum ore. This year, nearly two trillion pounds of aluminum will be recycled. The turnaround on a recycled aluminum can—from store shelf to thirsty consumer to smelter and back to store shelf—is less than sixty days.

Due to the high value of aluminum, the national addiction to canned beverages facilitates a special kind of sub-economy. It’s not exactly the safety net we should rely on for the indigent and the homeless and the disaffected, but it’s a start, and a balm in this new gilded age. For some reason, Minnesota has been a holdout in beverage-container deposits. We think the state could put an exclamation point on its reputation for general cleanliness and order by instituting one, as they have in New York, California, Iowa, Maine, Oregon, Vermont, and Michigan (where it’s a whopping ten cents per can or bottle). Even the most recalcitrant conservative can see that this is a private program for the public weal, a point-of-purchase fee willingly paid to insure that more aluminum stays in the recycling loop and out of the ditch, while benefiting some of the most self-reliant participants in off-the-radar sub-economies.

It is interesting to see Budweiser and other brewers trotting out antique designs for their packaging. Locally, Stite Beer has developed an aluminum bottle, which is more forward-looking than backward-looking (whoever remakes the cone-top can will make a mint), but we like what it means. If you can bring yourself to develop a taste for beverages in cans instead of plastic or glass bottles, you’ll be left with the sweet aftertaste known as enlightened self-interest.