March 17, 2023
It’s a freezing cold day in December when I meet photographers Tom Arndt and Michael Dvorak at their shared studio space in downtown Minneapolis. Tom and Michael make coffee for all three of us, trading jokes as they move around the studio. Coffee in hand, Tom and I sit to chat while Michael…
March 14, 2023
Michael Abdon Maple Grove, MN Fourth Year (anticipated graduation 2023) Marketing, Business Law Why WAM Collective? The Weisman is an important figurehead for the University, and I wanted to take on the responsibility of representing our student voices. I’m also grateful to finally tune into the artistic part of my brain I haven’t had the opportunity…
November 15, 2022
Weisman Art Museum (WAM) is pleased to announce that the museum has received a grant award in the amount of $239,912 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), as part of the agency’s competitive Museums for America program. WAM is one of 120 organizations across the country to receive a Museums for America…
July 27, 2022
Weisman Art Museum (WAM) is pleased to present Piotr Szyhalski: We Are Working All the Time!, on view August 20 — December 29, 2022. This major survey exhibition, curated by WAM Senior Curator Diane Mullin, features works in a variety of media across three decades of Szyhalski’s prolific and pioneering practice, including poster design,…
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…
June 2, 2022
The Weisman Art Museum is pleased to present two new exhibitions opening in June: Capturing Change: The Urban Images of Berenice Abbott and Giovanni Battista Piranesi, opening June 3 in the Edith Carlson Gallery; and Bimiwetigweyaa — Tcubúhatceh (The Sound the River Makes Flowing Along / The Ripple and Roar of a Flowing Stream),…
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 19, 2022
In September 2021, the Texas Legislature adopted Senate Bill 8, which restricts access to abortion by allowing private citizens to sue service providers. Later in the fall, we commissioned several artists to create responses to the legislation. We opened the series with an image created by the artist Dread Scott that equated Texas governance…
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
Have you ever imagined what it would be like to be able to touch the art at a museum? Conservators and preparators get to do just this as they delicately move, care for, and arrange the pieces in the museum’s collection. The WAM Collective spoke to Reggie Spanier, Preparator at WAM, about what it’s…