November 15, 2022

Weisman Art Museum receives a grant of nearly $240,000 from the federal Institute for Museum and Library Services to support a Truth and Reconciliation project with Indigenous communities

Exterior photograph of Weisman Art Museum

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 presents Piotr Szyhalski: We Are Working All the Time!

A nighttime color photo depicts four people in white shirts and black pants raise a large white flag,surrunded by spectators at Northern Spark festival in Minneapolis.

Weisman Art Museum (WAM) is pleased to present Piotr Szyhalski: We Are Working All the Time!, on view August 20 — December 31, 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

On The Nature of Shoreham Yards: An Interview with Gudrun Lock and Boris Oicherman by Miranda Trimmier

Artist Gudrun Lock an curator Boris Oicherman stand side by side, in front of Lock's "wall of underpants" in a recent exhibition at WAM.

“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

WAM opens two new exhibitions this summer, on the Big River as “a way of knowing” and documenting urban change, past and present

Artwork by Berenice Abbott and Giovanni Battista Giovanni

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

A Dozen Curatorial Careers Launched at the Weisman

Composite graphic with black-and-white headshots of previous years' O'Brien Curatorial Fellows' headshots against a background image of the Weisman Art Museum

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

Essay: Other Wars—Afghans, Violent Care, and Deprived Solidarity by Mariam Banahi

Red spraypaint on a cinderblock wall reading "Refugees welcome"

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

Essay: After Progress by Miranda Trimmier

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

Behind the Scenes at WAM: Talking Exhibition Design with Reggie Spanier

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…

March 21, 2022

WAM Student Staff Profile: Sage Caballero

A polaroid animation of Sage Caballero with a WAM gallery visible in the background and abstract colorful shapes

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

COVID Updates and Announcements

Photo of the exterior of Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota Twin Cities

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…