Few contemporary art museums in the United States command the respect the Walker Art Center does, and it earned that not through size but through the quality and daring of its curatorial choices. Thomas Barlow Walker began collecting art in the 1870s and opened his gallery to the public in 1879, making it one of the oldest public art institutions west of the Mississippi. The Walker moved to this Lowry Hill location in 1927, and the current building incorporates Edward Larrabee Barnes's distinctive 1971 addition and a major expansion by Herzog and de Meuron completed in 2005.
The collection is focused on modern and contemporary work — Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Chuck Close, Kara Walker, and dozens of others are represented. But the Walker has also been essential to performance, film, and experimental art in ways that purely visual-arts museums rarely are. The McGuire Theater on the lower level has presented artists ranging from Merce Cunningham to Philip Glass.
And immediately adjacent, connected by a pedestrian bridge, is the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.