May 2, 2018
Congratulations Director Lyndel King! 2018 Recipient of the President’s Award for Outstanding Service We are proud to announce that Lyndel King was awarded the President’s Award for Outstanding Service, joining an elite group of staff and faculty who have provided exceptional service to the University of Minnesota. The President’s Award for Outstanding Service is presented each year in the spring…
April 23, 2018
The global fashion industry is one of the most resource-intensive industries in the world. Emerging designers from the University of Minnesota’s College of Apparel Design program are reimagining this process in (RE)generation. On April 25 the Weisman will host the annual Design Showcase. Inspired by WAM’s exhibition Vanishing Ice, each student will present a ready-for-the-runway…
February 28, 2018
“If big things come in small packages, what comes in a 10 pound, seven ounce, brown paper package that measures 2 feet by 2 feet by 5 1/2 inches? A 10 foot 3 1/2 inch[-tall] 36 foot 2 inch-long life-size poster of a Greyhound bus, what else?” That was the beginning of an article…
February 14, 2018
Life is so often in the details, all the little things mixed up together that make your life yours. Artist Lawrence Weiner may have put it best in his public artwork formerly on the exterior of the Walker Art Center: “Bits and pieces put together to present a semblance of a whole”. Many art exhibitions…
February 13, 2018
As Minnesotan’s when we hear vanishing ice we think the long dark night is over and winter has finally gone. We are excited to break out our shorts and enjoy the 40-degree weather. However, when the Inuit people of Baffin Bay hear about vanishing ice they see their livelihood disappearing. With sea temperatures rising and…
February 8, 2018
WAM Files Phase II began this summer, an archival and interpretive project that will make archival records accessible. These curatorial, educational, and administrative records, office files and museum staff correspondence, architectural drawings, press clippings, and ephemera will give the public a secret window into WAM’s past and present. This project is a continuation of a…
February 7, 2018
Swaying slowly in the wind, a line of bright yellow balloons extends in a diagonal line over the desert scrub. The concentric circles emblazoned on four sides of the inflatable surface resemble staring eyes, encouraging sustained eye contact with these objects that seem both alive and inanimate. The repeated patterns on the floating spheres contribute…
February 6, 2018
Scientists, architects, educators, psychologists, artists—seemingly disparate, these people gathered in May 1970 in the studio of the artist Robert Irwin to learn together: what does it take to build habitable environments in space. This was the First National Symposium on Habitability of Environments, designed by artist Robert Irwin and the space program psychologist Ed…
February 2, 2018
While processing the archival materials of the curatorial department of the Weisman Art Museum, I came across an article from MN Daily called Imaginative Immersion: Three Days, Five Artists, which was about an atypical exhibit at the Weisman Art Museum in February of 2008. These five artists were part of a group independent study with UMN’s art…
January 25, 2018
As with any loan from a library, a bank or otherwise, unexpected things can happen. The University of Minnesota’s permanent art collection has long had an art rental program and at one point in time there were no rental fees to University employees. It happened one day in 1969 that a loan gone awry…