Walker show celebrates gifts of art

Bright abstracts draw visitors' eyes to one wall, then life-like full sized figures tucked into a corner might startle them. On another wall, a full-sized truck is caught mid-slither.

Such displays will continue to offer visual surprises during the Walker Art Center's 75th anniversary celebrations, especially tonight, when the center unwraps some birthday presents.

They are the fruits of an effort that began three years ago, when the Walker launched a campaign to seek donated art to mark the three-quarter-century milestone.

Its new show, "75 Gifts for 75 years," gives insight into the importance donations play in a museum's collection.

"As it turned out, the support for this initiative was so great that we now have over 120 donors of art for a total of over 200 pieces," said Walker senior curator Siri Engberg.

That includes works by 50 artists new to the Walker's holdings, which Engberg said is an important boost.

"We have a small collection," she said. "It's about 13,000 objects. So it's highly focused. It's focused mainly on art from the '60s to the present. So to be adding that kind of volume of new artists is really exciting for us."

And not all of these pieces have arrived at the Walker by chance.

"I would say it's a combination of serendipity and strategy, or opportunity and strategy," Engberg said.

Building a collection involves a kind of curatorial dance as budgets for buying new work are finite. That's where private collectors with connections to the Walker come in.

"We have had very strategic conversations with those collectors," Engberg said, "where they have said, 'I am interested in buying a work by this artist. Is this a work that in the future might be interesting to the Walker?'"

Some collectors, she said, are open to guidance.

"We have helped steer certain collectors to a certain piece that might eventually come to us," Engberg said. "And it's a win-win situation. It stays in their home for as long as they like and then someday comes here as its final resting place basically."

Many of the donations fill holes in the Walker collection. Engberg points to a vivid yellow abstract glowing on one wall, done by Beauford Delaney.

"[He] was an African American artist working in New York in the late '50s, in a very figurative vein, who moved to Paris and began working in an abstract mode," she said.

The Walker has long sought one of Delaney's pieces, as his work dovetails with other abstract expressionist work already in the collection.

The abstract painting came from the Regis collection of the late Myron Kunin, the founder of Regis Corp. who was a big collector and patron of the arts.

"It's a perfect painting to fill that gap," Engberg said. "We very specifically targeted that piece as we knew it was one which would make a real difference."

Across the room hang pictures by Luc Tuymans and Lari Pittman, two painters now considered major figures in contemporary art. The canvases represent another important function of gifts — acquiring work the Walker can no longer afford.

"For example Luc Tuymans, he's an artist who has a market that has just skyrocketed in recent years, and we didn't purchase a work in the early to mid-'80s as we probably should have with him," Engberg said. "So that is something we are delighted to have."

Recent donations include works by pop artist Andy Warhol and English painter David Hockney, Jasper Johns and Willem de Kooning pictures, a Chuck Close tapestry self-portrait and an early Kara Walker silhouette. The Walker's birthday gifts stretch through room after room.

The Walker wouldn't place a price tag on the gifts saying their value is in deepening the collection.

Engberg said just as "75 Gifts for 75 years" sheds light on the essential role of donations in the Walker's collection, it also reveals a little about the donors.

"In a way, this is a show that shows what people like to live with," she said. "And what people are interested in having part of their lives."

Engberg is living with them too. She's already working on fitting many of these pieces in future Walker shows.