Walker Art Center | Design Studio
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Design
The globally recognized Walker Art Center Design Studio cultivates and showcases leading work in contemporary design.
Architecture and design are the places where art and industry meet everyday life. From books to
exhibitions
, garden to gallery, online to IRL, the Walker’s Design Studio creates all the designed communications for the Walker. As a programming department, the studio hosts the annual
Insights Design Lecture Series
, mounts ambitious design exhibitions, and curates
Idea House 3
, a retail space dedicated to contemporary design. Meanwhile, its globally recognized
publishing program
and yearlong Mildred Friedman Design Fellowship extend design’s reach and foster emerging design talent.
The studio builds on a legacy reaching back almost a century. The Walker’s Idea House model homes (1941, 1947) and
Design Quarterly
journal (1954–1996) were among the first initiatives to showcase postwar design in the US. Today, the studio remains at the forefront of design discourse, through exhibitions like
Graphic Design: Now in Production
(2012),
Hippie Modernism
(2016), and
Designs for Different Futures
(2020)
As new technologies reshape language, images, and the ways we inhabit and navigate the world, the Walker Design Studio remains committed to the notion of the “public” in “publication.”
Walker Publishing
Insights Design Series
Design Stories
History
Design has been a major part of Walker Art Center programming since its founding in 1940, when Daniel S. Defenbacher, a trained architect and designer, became the first director. He began his tenure with a series of exhibitions on Housing:
American Houses Today, Accessories for the Home
, and
City Planning
, 1941. These exhibitions were followed closely by the Idea Houses, two fully functional homes open to the public featuring modern conveniences such as a dishwasher, and contemporary furnishings by leading designers like Charles and Ray Eames. The Idea House program was meant to encourage the homeowner to work with an architect to build an affordable home. Completing the Everyday Art and later Good Design movement, the Walker began publishing the
Design Quarterly
(originally
Everyday Art Quarterly
) in 1946. The journal was an industry-leading design publication well into the 1990s.
As design trends shifted, so did the programming focus. In the 1960s and 1970s, the design team presented exhibitions on topics such urban renewal, education, and the environment: these included
Toward a New City
,1965, based on a study of Minneapolis;
Making the City Observable
,1971;
New Learning Spaces and Places
,1974; and
The River: Images of the Mississippi
, 1976. Exhibitions featured lectures, workshops, and frequently complete issues of
Design Quarterly
. Occasionally designers presented events onsite, such as the conceptual team Haus/Rucker Co, who installed
Food City I(1971)
—literally, the city made from food—in front of the Walker and asked visitors to take a bite out of urban blight.
The 1980s and 1990s focused on graphic design and architectural trends with shows such as
De
Stijl: 1917–1931 Visions of Utopia,
1982;
Graphic Design in America,
1989; and the series
Architecture Tomorrow, 1988–1991
, with Frank Israel, Morphosis, Todd Williams/Billie Tsien, Stanley Saitowitz, Diller+Scofidio, and Steven Holl. Further focus on graphic design began in the 1980s with the start of Insights, a design lecture series that continues today.
In the last 25 years, design shows have continued to focus on current housing issues, due to environment, economy, and migration, including
Some Assembly Required: Contemporary
Prefabricated Houses
,2005;
Design for the Other 90%
,2008; and
Designs for Different
Future
s,2020, as well as a concentration on graphic design, including
Graphic
Design: Now in Production
, 2011.
While the design exhibition and programming continue, the department is also responsible for the graphics, guides, exhibition catalogues, print and digital materials for all Walker exhibitions and programming. The Walker has been fortunate to have a Design department in place since the very beginning.
Walker Publishing
For over 75 years, the Walker Art Center has explored the cutting edge of publishing across form and content. This continues today through our print and digital publishing endeavors.
Insights Design Lecture Series
Expand your understanding of graphic design with leading designers and design thinkers from around the world.
View Past Lectures
Design Stories
Type Meets Prototype: Kelli Anderson
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Angie Waller
Design
Type Meets Prototype: Kelli Anderson
How can the inner workings of technology be made more visible? Graphic designer and master paper engineer Kelli Anderson explores using pop-up books to reveal what is often hidden.
What does it mean to design around the idea of a ‘surface’?
Nazlı Ercan
Design
What does it mean to design around the idea of a ‘surface’?
How can Kandis Williams’s approach to exploring Blackness in layered and shifting ways inform a catalog? Designer Nazli Ercan explores.
Surya Mattu: Explaining the Unseen
Angie Waller
Design
Surya Mattu: Explaining the Unseen
How can artificial intelligence's decision-making process be more visible to humans? Founder of the Digital Witness Lab at Princeton University, Surya Mattu, discusses their art practice that explores how AI can be made more transparent, evaluated for bias, and the ways your devices are tracking you at home.
I Didn’t Go to Art School: Seth Bogart on Queer Punx, Music, and Art
Jake Yuzna
Design
Performing Arts
Visual Arts
I Didn’t Go to Art School: Seth Bogart on Queer Punx, Music, and Art
As he gears up to embark on a North American tour with Hunx and His Punx, multidisciplinary artist and musician Seth Bogart sat down to chat about queercore, working with John Waters, and why he is glad he didn’t go to art school.
Is AI Sorry It Took Your Job?
Angie Waller
Design
Is AI Sorry It Took Your Job?
As algorithmic systems increasingly dictate the rhythms of our reality, artist and data scientist Angie Waller delves into the broader human realities of tech and make visible the unseen forces of digital capitalism and authoritarian automation.
Twin Cities Sounds
Design
Twin Cities Sounds
Local artists explore Twin Cities' sonic landscapes through newly commissioned original works of audio available via an interactive map.
Pauline Oliveros Makes New Music for Minnesotans
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Design
Performing Arts
Visual Arts
Pauline Oliveros Makes New Music for Minnesotans
Marking the 45-year anniversary of Pauline Oliveros's
Cheap Commissions
, historic video footage explores Oliveros creating original works for anyone who approached her in Downtown Minneapolis.
Poster Insights
Design
Poster Insights
For nearly 40 years, the Design Studio at the Walker has produced original posters for the annual Insights Design Lecture Series. Gathered here is a small selection of these posters that trace the evolution of graphic design at the Walker and throughout the globe.
Reframing Sophie Calle: An Interview with Julia Born
Ben Schwartz
Design
Reframing Sophie Calle: An Interview with Julia Born
Swiss graphic designer Julia Born sits down to discuss how she employed an intricate typographic and graphic system int he exhibition catalog
Sophie Calle: Overshare
Artist Yule Log
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Design
Visual Arts
Artist Yule Log
Enjoy the holidays with an artist yule log inspired by Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville's Dreammachine.
The Haunting Call of Concrete: The Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan
Matt Colquhoun
Design
Performing Arts
The Haunting Call of Concrete: The Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan
How does utopian architecture of the past haunt today? Looking backward and forward Gordon Chapman-Fox explores the hauntology of UK New Towns movement through music.
Sound and Architecture: A Dialogue of the Improbable and the Intimate
Victoria Keddie
Design
Performing Arts
Visual Arts
Sound and Architecture: A Dialogue of the Improbable and the Intimate
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