As the headlines signal daily, we need to learn to talk to each other about those things we hold dear as well as those ideas that perplex or scare us; often Walker programs provide a forum in which provocative issues can be discussed and debated with open-minded respect. For example, last fall the film/video department hosted three concurrent post-screening discussions and online forums around Paradise Now, a Palestinian film about two young suicide bombers. The free community forum Rap Sessions: Race and Hip-Hop continued the Walker's Civic Engagement initiative this spring. During Rap Sessions, six leading scholars moderated an in-depth discussion about the hip-hop generation and race in America. Some 215 young, racially diverse audience members attended what City Pages called "a great sprawling conversation." In addition, the new media initiatives department continued to refine Art on Call, funded by a leadership grant from the Institute of Library and Museum Services, which allows visitors to use their cell phones to access a rich trove of information on individual works in the collection.
In April of 2006, the Walker was the fortunate recipient of a $2 million Wallace Foundation Excellence Award in recognition of these efforts to more deeply engage and diversify audiences. The awards were created to recognize a small number of leading organizations that are effectively reaching out to new audiences and imaginatively building participation in the arts. The program requires the Walker to match the grant on at least a one-to-one basis and create a permanent endowment that will be committed to continuing participation-building initiatives.
The Walker's $2 million Excellence Award will help to ensure that our newly expanded facility will remain a place of convergence--bringing artists, art forms, and audiences together in innovative ways. The grant provides an extraordinary opportunity for this institution to offer audiences a wider range of experiences on a daily basis. I am proud that the new Walker magnifies the ways in which audiences can become more active participants in discovering the links between art and life as well as among multiple artistic disciplines. For example, visitors may attend open rehearsals for new dance or theater performances being created by artists-in-residence or participate in community forums, post-screening talks, and book club discussions.
The Excellence Award makes it possible for the Walker to sustain and expand the impact of its work with local constituencies and to draw national attention to the urgency of building new audiences for new ideas and art forms. The Walker's interactive educational spaces, critical components of the expanded facility and our overall participation-building strategies, allow visitors to enjoy audio and film/video programs; to access an extensive archive of images, audio and video clips, and text via Dialog, a tabletop computer interface; and discover playful and dynamic information-gathering by conversing with the computer-animated Dolphin Oracle II, which answers visitors' questions and poses some of its own. All these activities are available daily and accessible whenever the visitor desires. Additional alternative ways for obtaining and exchanging information include podcast audio guides, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, and blogs (blogs.walkerart.org).
As the first art museum in the country to devote full-time staff solely to creating and implementing programs for teenagers, the Walker continues to serve as an international model for the effective and creative engagement of teens and young adults in the intellectual life of a cultural institution. With the support of the Wallace Foundation and other critical funders, the Walker has integrated teens into all programming areas for more than a decade, offering young people opportunities to develop new skills, express themselves creatively, and promote interaction with peers and mentors. Teens often serve as curators for artistic and educational programs, creating ways to further engage their peers, which now number about 70,000 annually.
