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On view at the Weisman in fall 2024, enriched with an inviting reading room and videos of the artist speaking about her work, this compelling exhibition invited visitors from campus and the wider community to “consider their place in the history Walker’s work reveals, and how disremembering continues as we move into the future.” (Minnesota Daily) Organized by the New Britain Museum of American Art and The Museum Box, the exhibition presented Walker’s print portfolio, Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005. This suite of fifteen large-scale prints illuminates experiences of racism and violence against African Americans that were absent or only alluded to in dominant historical representations of the Civil War.  Shown with Walker’s series was a group of original Harper’s Weekly engravings of the Civil War by the New England-born and -based, nineteenth-century American realist artist, Winslow Homer (1836-1910). This pairing of Walker’s contemporary prints with examples of works from the Harper’s material that inspired her opens opportunities to consider distinction and connections between the two bodies of work.

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WAM’s featured exhibition for spring 2025 was created as part of the museum’s years-long collaboration with We Are All Criminals (WAAC), curated by WAAC director and founder, Emily Baxter. SEEN featured currently incarcerated artists in collaboration with artists, activists, and academics in the Twin Cities community. Together they explored issues of incarceration, isolation, healing, and coming home. Representing a range of cultural, personal, and professional backgrounds and forms of artistic expression, people on the “inside” partnered with people on the “outside” based on shared creative curiosities and personal affinities. The exhibition's seven installations stretched the bounds of the museum as a site for community engagement and critical examination of American carceral institutions—both the generational harms and the pathways for bringing healing to the cycle of harm. Jennifer Bowen, founder and director of the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio about her experience of the exhibition, says: “[The artwork] literally took my breath away, the way that it speaks metaphorically not just to the pain that incarceration causes, but to the kind of human need to still find beauty in the midst of that pain.” 

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Through the summer and early fall of 2025, WAM’s featured exhibition dove into the enduring pursuit of the Future City, globally and in Minnesota. Organized by a team of University of Minnesota architecture and design faculty, researchers, and students, the exhibition included a collection of illustrations, diagrams, and architectural drawings—curated by U of M McKnight Land-Grant Professor and urban designer Dingliang Yang. The show also featured groundbreaking case studies and models reimagining the form and function of future cities. Bridging global examples with pivotal projects from Minnesota, Imagining Future Cities fostered dynamic dialogue between international trends and local ingenuity. Cities (one of the most complex inventions of human civilization) are constantly evolving and transforming; some changes emerge organically, while others stem from deliberate human intervention through imaginative innovation.  The installations in Imagining Future Cities invited critical reflection on how contemporary urban design can encourage a more sustainable, equitable, and efficient future, while also embracing beauty as an essential dimension of city-making. 

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Featured in the Edith Carlson gallery in fall 2024, Seeking for the Lost paired archival materials with new portraiture by contemporary artist Christopher E. Harrison. This moving exhibition, organized by the African American Interpretive Center of Minnesota and curated by JoJo Bell, gave stories to historical subjects noted in the eponymous “Seeking for the Lost” column from The Appeal, a Black-owned and operated St. Paul newspaper of note in the late 1800 and early 1900s. The column printed ads from those seeking family members who had been sold or “lost” during slavery and through the post-Reconstruction period. Informally, small ads started appearing in the paper in 1888, and in 1891 The Appeal published the ads, free of charge, as a permanent column. Each painting by Christopher Harrison in the exhibition imagines what a missing subject described in “Seeking for the Lost” might have looked like. By portraying each lost family member with a distinct perspective and personality, Harrison’s art emphasizes kinship as a unifying power and literacy as a means of endurance. Reporting for Power 104.7, Myah Goff writes, “[Seeking for the Lost] not only honors the legacy of Black history in Minnesota but also prompts viewers to reflect on the enduring impact of slavery and the ongoing struggle for recognition and justice.”

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Curated by Laura Moran, the 2016–17 Lisa & E. Gerald O’Brien Curatorial Fellow, this exhibition from spring 2025 in the Edith Carlson Gallery featured an eclectic selection from the Weisman’s collection that explore the intersection of art and humor via works that actively signal laughs, groans, and, sometimes, the discomfort in-between. In conjunction with Laughing Matter, WAM held its first ever Comedy Night, featuring stand-up by students from the U of M Comedy Club, local favorite Maggie Faris, and headliner Ali Sultan. 

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In addition to seasonal and traveling exhibitions, the Weisman offers several ongoing shows of artwork, including Ebb/Flow, in the Leo and Doris Hodroff Gallery. Addressing the violence of separation, the practice of keeping memories, and the invasive effects of colonialism, artists Pritika Chowdhry, Chotsani Elaine Dean and Courtney M. Leonard respectively contemplate the past, the present, and possible futures in their large scale, ceramic-based installation works. Their individual works poetically contemplate the 1947 partition of India, the manual and psychological labor of enslaved and free African Americans, and the changed environments and Indigenous lifeways brought on by outside occupation and settlement. 

Crossing boundaries of traditional studio ceramics, sculpture, and conceptual and political art, the Ebb/Flow multimedia installations deepen access to and interrogate sites of historical and cultural upheaval. In addition, they add to the material and subject diversity of  the Weisman’s notable ceramics and American art collections. As such, the Weisman proudly presents these works to evoke reflection on and discussion of some of the most important and resounding issues of our time.

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In his “A Talk to Teachers” from 1963, James Baldwin opined that “American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.” This ongoing exhibition, which draws its title from Baldwin's description, showcases works from the Weisman's collection by American artists that demonstrate, confound, and probe these aspects of the American experience. Featuring artistic expressions by Indigenous creators, the descendants of the earliest European colonizers, as well as enslaved Africans, and the work of artists who came to the United States through immigration, this set of objects from the Weisman collection presents a rich and complex panorama of American art.

From its origins in 1934 as the University Gallery, Weisman Art Museum has been committed to collecting the work of American artists. Critically considering the history and nature of that commitment, this new Woodhouse Family Gallery installation highlights the variety and relevance of the museum’s holdings of United States art, with a focus on the many contested terrains at play in American art, history, and experience.

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WAM’s ongoing exhibition in the Weisman’s collection gallery considers the idea of the contemporary, featuring works that hail from the turn of the 21st century to the current day. Art from this time period is often referred to as “contemporary” because it is loosely contemporaneous with its publics’ own timeframe, and is, as such, theoretically not yet situated in historical context. This exhibition aims to extend that notion of “the contemporary,” to invite visitors to consider how their own lens on this present moment tinges their experience of the artworks on view. 

The show also provides a window onto recent acquisitions and artists included in the Weisman’s collection, with hints of intriguing future conversations possible between the earlier and more recently accessioned artworks at WAM, and the insights they might offer into our shared “contemporary” moments yet to come.

In the past two years, we’ve worked to reshape what were once separate public program and education departments into a cohesive ecosystem where learning and engagement actively build upon and enrich one another. The department now includes three full-time professional staff and more than ten rotating student scholars, both undergraduate and graduate, whose perspectives actively shape our evolving practice. 

This restructuring signals WAM’s broader institutional commitment to being a teaching museum animated by care and experimentation. This approach has already fostered powerful interdisciplinary collaborations, most recently with the University’s medical school - through initiatives such as Imagination Studio, which investigates the cognitive effects of art engagement on mental health, and through visual literacy training for future clinicians (see WAM, Art, and Wellness below). These efforts advance a model of whole-person education, which emphasizes not only technical knowledge, but also empathy, cultural awareness, and the ability to manage through complexity. 

At the Weisman, we see public programs as extensions of our role as a teaching museum, spaces where art sparks inquiry, dialogue, and reflection across differences. Rather than prescribing meaning, programs serve as invitations: to pause, to question, and to engage with the art, with one another, and with the pressing issues of our time.

The opening day of Kara Walker: Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) exemplified this layered, reflective approach. To mark the launch, WAM commissioned a performance by Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop, a Twin Cities–based organization supporting Native, Black, and IPOC artists in puppetry and performance. Alumni Erica Warren, Johnathan Boyd, Luis Lopez, and Tim Blighton created three original shadow puppetry pieces in direct response to Walker’s art, with sound design by Atim Opoka. A post-performance talkback extended the exchange, offering insight into the artists’ creative process.

By commissioning Twin Cities artists to respond to Walker’s work, WAM rooted the exhibition in local perspectives and underscored how narratives of race, history, and power reverberate here at home. Their performances activated Walker’s visual language, situating it within contemporary struggles for representation, healing, and voice.

Later that day, WAM welcomed art historian Dr. Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw for a keynote lecture, Kara Walker, Winslow Homer, Blackness, & AI. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Shaw is a leading scholar of race, gender, and representation in American art. Her lecture traced the visual lineage of Civil War-era imagery through Winslow Homer and examined how Walker’s annotated prints reframe these histories with radical clarity. She also introduced a forward-looking lens, exploring how generative AI is reshaping the creation and circulation of images in contemporary culture, while connecting these shifts to speculative futures and Afrofuturist frameworks that imagine new possibilities for representation and cultural memory.

As part of the Seeking for the Lost exhibition, WAM introduced a new participatory format: Paint & Listen, featuring visual artist Christopher Harrison in conversation with curator and UMN PhD candidate JoJo Bell. Rather than a conventional lecture, guests were invited to make artwork while listening to a live dialogue. As Harrison painted in real time, he reflected on his creative process, his archival research, the emotional weight of reimagining “Information Wanted” ads, and the legacy of the free Black press in post-reconstruction America.

The Paint & Listen format fostered a reflective atmosphere, allowing participants to process complex themes not only intellectually but also physically, through the act of making. Research in cognitive science and education shows that engaging the hands while listening can enhance comprehension, memory retention, and emotional integration.

This model reflects WAM’s broader commitment to embodied learning, evident in our Open Studio program, tour and workshop series, and collaborations with the University of Minnesota Medical School. Across these initiatives, we’ve found that hands-on participation fosters emotional attunement, builds resilience, and supports reflective practice. Paint & Listen extends this approach into public programming, offering visitors meaningful, personal pathways into art - and into the urgent questions it asks us to consider.

In our Open Studio, both students and the public unplug and engage in tactile, hands-on making, deepening connections to the ideas explored in the galleries and affirming the value of creativity as a shared practice.

The Open Studio program at the Weisman Art Museum invites visitors to slow down, reflect, and respond to art through hands-on, self-directed art-making. Rooted in inquiry-based learning and inclusive design, Open Studio deepens visitor engagement by offering activities that are thematically linked to the museum’s exhibitions, connecting personal reflection with larger social, cultural, and historical questions. Each project is designed to deepen engagement by inviting participants to respond to themes from the galleries through accessible, tactile experiences.

Highlight from Open Studio this year was Flower Stories, presented in conversation with the exhibition SEEN. Inspired by the collaborative garden created by artists Ronald “Bino” Greer II and Diane Willow, the activity invited visitors to craft sculptural flowers as symbols of healing, memory, and transformation. Over the course of the month, a community garden wall bloomed in the studio, growing into a collective expression of care and resilience.

Another featured activity, Laugh Lines, developed by Minneapolis-based artist Kameron White alongside Laughing Matter, invited participants to create their own comedic illustrations, exploring character development, humor, and timing as ways to reflect on personal and cultural identity. These activities exemplify the museum’s commitment to embodied learning and creative expression as essential tools for meaning-making.

In a digital age where meaning is often flattened by screens, Open Studio offers a tactile, human-centered alternative, a space where complex ideas can be explored through making. Looking ahead, WAM is expanding the program through a Teaching Artist model, bringing local artists into the studio to lead public-facing, exhibition-responsive workshops. This next phase will further enrich Open Studio as a platform for dialogue, reflection, and community-building. 

At the Weisman Art Museum, accessibility is an evolving, values-driven practice grounded in equity and inclusive design. In late 2024, WAM closed out its IMLS-funded initiative Arts Access: Beyond the Senses, a transformative, multi-year project that resulted in a new, multi-layered approach to accessibility across exhibitions, programs, and public spaces.

This work was developed in collaboration with the University’s Disability Resource Center, Vision Loss Resources, CATSS, and a dedicated accessibility advisory committee, centering the lived experiences of visitors with sensory and cognitive disabilities. This resulted in the development of new interpretive strategies, verbal description protocols, training resources, and evaluation methods that continue to shape the museum’s offerings today.

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Among the most visible outcomes of this work is the adaptation of CAPPTION, an NFC-enabled interpretive platform that allows visitors to access responsive, multilingual artwork information directly on their smartphones. CAPPTION adapts content to each user’s needs, automatically translating into over 130 languages, adjusting font size, and providing alt text and image descriptions. It also saves a history of scanned works for future reference. This tool embodies WAM’s belief in access through autonomy, giving every visitor the ability to determine how they engage with exhibitions.

To support visitors with sensory sensitivities and cognitive processing needs, WAM also offers sensory bags stocked with headphones, visual timers, fidget items, and other tools for emotional regulation. A downloadable social narrative, complete with photos and wayfinding details, helps prepare guests for the museum environment before they arrive.

Together, these efforts reflect WAM’s deeper institutional shift: from accessibility as accommodation to accessibility as co-creation. Informed by community insight and ongoing collaboration, the museum’s approach continues to expand what inclusive, multisensory museum experiences can, and should be.

The Weisman Art Museum’s growing portfolio of art and wellness initiatives reflects a powerful belief: that art can be a conduit for healing, reflection, and transformation. As conversations around mental health and care infrastructure become increasingly urgent, WAM is investing in programs that explore how creativity can support emotional resilience, deepen empathy, and enrich clinical training.

At the heart of this work are core collaborations with faculty from across the University of Minnesota Medical School. WAM’s educators regularly lead future clinicians, from fields including palliative care, pharmacy, internal medicine, and beyond, through the galleries as part of structured workshops designed to hone observational acuity, inquiry-based discussion, and reflective thinking. These experiences encourage students to lean into ambiguity, develop emotional attunement, and consider the complexity of human experience; skills that are essential to compassionate, patient-centered care. Within these sessions, the artwork becomes a mirror, a metaphor, and a method, positioning the museum as an extension of the clinical classroom.

This past year also marked the continuation of Imagination Studio, an interdisciplinary, research-based program designed to support youth experiencing anxiety and depression. Developed in partnership with Dr. Katie Cullen, artist Yuko Taniguchi, and the Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain, the program integrates creative expression with clinical research to examine the impact of arts engagement on mental health and well-being. Participants explore both inner emotional landscapes and lived experiences through a series of creative modalities, led by a cohort of teaching artists. The study has shown measurable positive shifts, supported by self-reported assessments and neurological data collected through MRI scans.

WAM is also a key partner in the Becoming a Doctor series, an integrated, longitudinal course that is part of the Center for the Art of Medicine (CFAM). CFAM works to elevate the role of the arts and humanities in medical education by nurturing curiosity, fostering resilience, and promoting professionalism among physicians and physicians-in-training. Looking ahead, WAM’s Public Engagement and Learning team will host co-teach a Visual Art + Medicine course in Spring 2026 as part of the Becoming a Teacher series. This course will draw directly on insights from both Imagination Studio and the museum’s inquiry-based approaches to visual analysis and reflective practice.

The Weisman partners with local organizations and artists, campus departments and student groups, several times per year to present special events, talks, and performances through the museum’s cosponsorship program. By waiving venue rental fees and donating in-kind staff and promotional support, cosponsorships ensure fewer barriers for our communities to access both the platform and reach of WAM, inviting new audiences and community-led programming into the museum.

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Dia de los Muertos x Centro Tyrone Guzman

For Dia de los Muertos, WAM partnered with Centro Tyrone Guzman, a nonprofit in South Minneapolis that has helped Latine immigrants in Minnesota thrive for 50 years, to host a celebration and community ofrenda, created by altarista Monica Vega. More than 300 community members gathered at WAM to honor the holiday with hot chocolate and conchas, art-making and remembrance, adding mementos of their own beloved ancestors to a sprawling ofrenda situated in the Riverview Gallery. 

Rocking Chair (Re)Evolution x Amoke Kubat

In the spring, WAM cosponsored a program with Northside Minneapolis artist, writer, and community space-maker Amoke Kubat: Rocking Chair (Re)Evolution, a multicultural, community-engaged project to celebrate the art of mothering — a vital yet undervalued role encompassing the care of children, families, and vulnerable populations across all stages of life. Highlighting the visible and invisible labor of mothers worldwide, the initiative calls for recognition of the relentless, 24/7 work of caretaking, often burdened by poverty and lack of resources. Twenty-four rocking chairs, all made by local artists — mothers, grandmothers, aunties — were installed in WAM’s Riverview Gallery. The rocking chairs stood in as symbols for care, relaxation, connection, and even resistance — not just for mothers but also for those aging, disabled, or simply seeking comfort. 

Kubat’s cosponsored project culminated in a public ceremony and reception at WAM on March 30, gifting the finished chairs to select local mothers and featuring a debut performance by the Rocking Chair (Re)Evolution Lullaby Orchestra. The event brought together mothers, grandmothers, families, and friends in a celebration of mothering as a pathway of love and transformation. 

In an interview with Minnesota Public Radio, musician Emily Youngdahl Wright says,

“The whole project itself is just such a beautiful example of thinking about the questions: What kind of rest do you need, and what kind of support do you need? The chairs remind us that [caregiving work] doesn’t really end when you’re a parent and when you’re a grandparent — when you are tending to this world that is in so much need of tending right now.”

Bad Africans x Gender & Sexuality Center for Queer and Trans Life

WAM collaborated with University of Minnesota’s Gender & Sexuality Center for Queer & Trans Life to present Bad Africans in April 2025, in honor of the Trans Day of Visibility. This play follows the story of a young African influencer, and their struggle to go (and find) home. Performed by organizer and playwright Ibimina Dominique Thompson and followed by a panel conversation with guest artist N'Yomi Stewart, this multimedia ode to African queerness in the black diaspora situates afrocentric queer forms of expression as fine art, through a Gen-Z lens.

The WAM Student Guide program reflects a significant shift in how the museum approaches in-gallery teaching. Once a volunteer docent program, it has evolved into a paid student leadership opportunity that expands access and creates meaningful learning experiences for University of Minnesota undergraduates and graduate students from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

Led by Ricki Williams, WAM’s Public Engagement and Learning Coordinator, the student guide program emphasizes inquiry-based learning, contextual depth, and active engagement in the galleries. Drawing on her background in cultural curation and classroom teaching, Williams has shaped a pedagogy that is welcoming, rigorous, and responsive. Student guides are positioned as both interpreters and facilitators, equipping them to lead conversations that spark curiosity, critical thinking, and personal connection with the art on view.

Inquiry-based tours at the Weisman invite visitors to take a closer look at the artwork on view. Guides create interactive experiences that challenge the idea of “right” and “wrong” ways to engage with art. Tours reflect the research interests of student guides as well as the needs of each visiting group. The museum offers two types of tour experiences: guided tours, led by student guides or staff, typically lasting 60–90 minutes depending on group participation; and self-guided tours, available during open hours, which use printed booklets to lead reflection around six works of art. Tour formats can also be adapted with workshops or activities for a more hands-on experience.

Visitors can book inquiry-based tours through the museum’s new booking platform.

The WAM Collective is the Weisman Art Museum’s student leadership group, composed of five student officers who act as the creative and strategic bridge between the museum and the University of Minnesota’s broader student body. Registered through Student Unions and Activities as an official campus life program, the Collective provides a platform for students to explore contemporary museum practices, develop public programs, and design initiatives that invite their peers into deeper engagement with the museum’s exhibitions, spaces, and resources.

The group is guided by Joy Scanlon, WAM’s new Campus Engagement Manager, whose background as a practicing artist, gallery manager, and museum educator brings a unique blend of perspectives to the role. Under her leadership, the WAM Collective considers the evolving role of the museum within a university setting, asking bold questions about relevance, inclusion, and how art can animate student life.

WAM Collective’s work is wide-ranging: they produce large scale open house events, host study nights that transform the museum into a student-centered gathering space, table across campus to connect with peers, collaborate with other student groups, and create resources such as zines that expand and nuance the museum’s practices. Through peer-to-peer programming, creative experimentation, and an emphasis on student agency, the Collective does more than make space for students—it empowers them to shape what that space can become, ensuring the museum remains responsive to the ideas and energies of its student community.