January 22, 2019
Jack Zipes, University of Minnesota professor emeritus of German and comparative literature, returned to campus Wednesday night to deliver a lecture in conjunction with WAM’s exhibition, The Wonderful World Before Disney. An acclaimed scholar of myth, folk, and fairy-tales, Zipes discussed the past and contemporary social and political roles of these stories, turning to his…
January 18, 2019
In March 2019, we expect an invasion—an invasion of a beautiful sort. The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) will hold its annual conference, Claytopia, in Minneapolis from March 27 through 30. Several thousand ceramic artists will descend on us during that time, and at WAM we will be ready. Ceramic artist…
January 18, 2019
This spring WAM is excited to present Baggage Claims, an exhibit that examines the significance of the things we carry with us through the lens of luggage. Suitcases and crates symbolize the movement of people and belongings across the world, and they evoke the political and economic concerns that incite and result from this travel….
January 18, 2019
In 2017, the Weisman Art Museum received a collection of over 3,000 fairy-tale themed postcards from Jack Zipes, professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota. As one of the most prolific scholars of folk and fairy tales, he has been influential in highlighting their social and political role in…
January 18, 2019
ACT×4 When artist Marina Abramović famously declared The Artist Is Present, the immediate follow-up question that could be asked is: “present to what end?” Can we think of a physical presence of an artist in a gallery as having a goal? Presence is an action: performance is the most affordable form of making, the most…
December 21, 2018
To coincide with WAM’s ongoing exhibition, I Want to Make This Perfectly Clear, the WAM Collective recently hosted local artist and activist Leon Wang to lead a protest poster-making workshop. A special art form with the potential to be an extremely powerful method of protest, posters have a long history within political and performative activism….
December 21, 2018
The WAM Book Club is excited to announce our brand new book selections. Our guided book tours offer valuable insight and discussion of museum artworks that correspond with the contents and authors of selected titles. Our spring book choices share meaning and connection with Baggage Claims, a new exhibition that grapples with themes of immigration,…
August 13, 2018
Many of the World War I posters included in the Fight or Buy Bonds exhibit address the challenges of mobilizing the American economy to meet the needs of the war and ask the public to accept the burdens. Even though American involvement in the war was much shorter than that of the European powers, the…
August 1, 2018
Some of the most striking World War I posters in the Fight or Buy Bonds exhibit were directed at mobilizing women to meet national needs. The massive mobilization required by twentieth-century warfare put great strains on American society. With four million men taken into the armed forces, labor shortages developed in many sectors which…
June 26, 2018
Many of the World War I posters included in the Weisman Art Museum exhibit focus on mobilizing manpower for the military and assuring adequate labor resources for the war effort. When the United States entered the war in April 1917, the country was poorly prepared both militarily and economically. For several years there had been…