June 28, 2022
“This interview has been edited for length and clarity”: It’s a throwaway phrase, a quick way of indicating that a printed conversation has been pruned of the false starts, fillers, tangents, and rabbit holes that might have unfolded in the three-dimensional dialogue on which it’s based. The process of smoothing and shortening interviews is…
May 4, 2022
In 2009, Weisman Art Museum (WAM) established the E. Gerald and Lisa O’Brien Curatorial Fellowship. For over twelve years, the O’Brien Fellowship has been launching curatorial careers by enabling recent graduates to achieve their first paid curatorial museum staff position, as they consider continuing toward an advanced degree. Art history majors from across the…
April 15, 2022
After Progress An activist investor is leveraging his stake in Canadian Pacific to force the company into climate action, my friend Gudrun Lock tells me. This news overlays our walk through the patchwork of forest, park, and grassland that surrounds the CP-owned Shoreham Yards train and truck site in northeast Minneapolis. The air smells like…
March 21, 2022
Sage Caballero (he/they) is a senior majoring in psychology, with minors in art history, and gender, women & sexuality studies. Sage is particularly interested in how all these subjects intersect within museums. They hope to work to create a more accessible museum space in the future. They are a researcher and musician and love experiencing…
March 21, 2022
Masks Are Welcome, But Not Required March 21, 2022: As of today, masks are welcome, but not required for visitors and staff at the Weisman Art Museum (WAM) and WAM Shop, in accordance with University of Minnesota policy and current public health guidance from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
October 28, 2021
the wider you are the emptier and the more innocent of any signal the more precious the text feels to me as I make my way through it reminding myself listening for any sound from you [1] —From To the Margin, W. S. Merwin The speaker in W.S. Merwin’s poem, To the Margin, addresses the margin…
October 19, 2021
Meet the 2021-2022 cohort of WAM Collective Officers—a dynamic group of University of Minnesota students who care deeply about the role of art & museums in social change. The WAM Collective meets weekly to discuss the museum field and to plan programming for the campus community which includes activities like study nights, art-making opportunities, and…
September 15, 2021
September 15, 2021, Minneapolis, MN — Executive Vice President and Provost Rachel T. A. Croson has announced that Alejandra Peña-Gutiérrez will be the next director of the University of Minnesota’s Weisman Art Museum (WAM). Peña will begin her new role at WAM on November 29, 2021. An internationally accomplished museum leader and arts professional,…
June 3, 2021
Every experience is a multi-sensory experience, whether we actively perceive it as such or not. Changes in sensory input, likewise, change our composite experience of the world. Even so, people with sensory loss are rarely consulted during the planning process of collective experience-creation; not included in the development of those experiences, people with sensory…
June 1, 2021
For their final program of the semester, the Weisman Art Museum’s student group, WAM Collective, convened a virtual roundtable with peer student advisory groups, the Student Advisory Council at the Tang Museum at Skidmore College, and the Agents for Creative Action (ACA) of the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA). On the afternoon of May…