WALKER ART CENTER ANNOUNCES $75 MILLION REVAMP, NAMES FIONN MEADE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

The Walker Art Center has unveiled plans for its new seventy-five million-dollar renovation, reports the Star Tribune’s Mary Abbe. With a new glass-walled entrance pavilion, groves of trees, and acres of new grass, the newly designed art center will unify a nineteen-acre cultural “campus,” including the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

Sixty million dollars has already been committed to the project, with ten million dollars in public money. Construction will begin this fall and is slated to be finished by 2016.

Said Walker director Olga Viso, “This plan envelops the whole building in a carpet of green.”

In addition to announcing its plans for a seventy-five dollars-million-dollar expansion, the Walker Art Center has announced that Fionn Meade, who’s currently senior curator, will now be artistic director, according to Artnews’s Andrew Russeth. After serving as curator of SculptureCenter in New York, Meade headed to the Walker last year, taking a job as senior curator of cross-disciplinary platforms.

In addition, Nisa Mackie has been hired as the Walker’s education and public programs director.