MINNEAPOLIS, MN.- The Walker Art Center opens its expanded facility and the Twin Cities’ newest cultural icon on Sunday, April 17, 2005. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects Herzog & de Meuron, the new Walker significantly enhances the Walker’s ability to commission and present today’s most innovative visual, performing, and media artists from around the globe. Giving physical form to a unique multidisciplinary model and doubling the Walker’s size, the expansion includes gallery space; the region’s largest library of contemporary art; new interactive educational lounges; an intimate 385-seat theater; a refurbished Cinema; street-level and roof-top terraces and plazas; lounges for both small and large groups to gather; 20.21, a fine-dining restaurant, and Gallery 8 Café, operated by internationally acclaimed chef Wolfgang Puck; and underground parking. In addition, a new skyspace by James Turrell, sited on greenspace that will become a new four-acre park in the project’s second phase, complements the Walker’s 11-acre Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

Opening-weekend festivities feature an exclusive Members’ Preview Party from 8 pm–1 am, Saturday, April 16, and a daylong Grand-opening Celebration, open to the public, from 9 am–9 pm Sunday, April 17. On Saturday, Walker members will be among the first to see seven new exhibitions showcasing the collection; the first music and dance performances in the William and Nadine McGuire Theater; and screenings in the Walker Cinema. In addition, building tours will take place and visitors will enjoy food and drink by Wolfgang Puck. Sunday’s Grand-opening features art-making in the new Art Lab; performances beginning with a solo piano concert by Philip Glass and concluding with the mesmerizing ensemble Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali from Pakistan; and ongoing screenings highlighting cinema from the past century. A complete schedule of opening-day events follows.

Design for the New Walker

The design for the new Walker integrates its existing building with an expanded campus, both respecting the integrity of architect Edward Larrabee Barnes’ original design and engaging the surrounding neighborhood. The new Walker links distinct areas of the city—natural, residential, and metropolitan—physically and metaphorically connecting the urban downtown with Minneapolis’ Uptown communities and neighborhoods. Along Hennepin Avenue, the city’s most active thoroughfare, the grade of the street is mirrored by the slope of the Walker’s new General Mills Hennepin Lounge, blurring the distinction between inside and out. The new Walker creates a civic and social gathering space, drawing visitors not only for presentations, educational events, and community activities, but also discussion and relaxation. Architects Herzog & de Meuron, and the Minneapolis-based architectural firm Hammel, Green and Abrahamson, Inc., collaborated with the Walker on the site plan and design. Landscape architect Michel Desvigne, known for his innovative landscape designs throughout Europe, is designing a new four-acre public park that in the project’s second phase will link the Walker with the existing Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Noted lighting designer Arnold Chan, founder of Isometrix Lighting + Design, is part of the project team.

A striking element of the new design is a 130,000-square-foot south wing, which houses the Walker's new William and Nadine McGuire Theater, as well as a new Walker Shop, event space, and Wolfgang Puck-operated restaurant. The exterior of the south wing is covered with embossed aluminum mesh panels that reflect natural light, actively mirroring changing weather conditions and shifting appearance as visitors, pedestrians, and drivers travel past the building. Asymmetric windows punctuate the new building's façade, revealing activity inside the Walker to passersby and connecting visitors to the life of the street. A 60-foot-long dynamic video projection on the etched-glass portion of the Hennepin façade heralds the Walker’s exhibitions and programs. A new entrance plaza to the east, along Hennepin Avenue, opens the Walker to the city and yields dramatic vistas onto the downtown skyline.