The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, has announced the formation of an Indigenous Public Art Section Committee, composed of native curators, artists and cultural professionals whose names are yet to be released, Art Forum reports. They will work with the institution to commission an artist for the sculpture garden, selected via an open call.
This new committee comes in the wake of the controversy surrounding Sam Durant’s Scaffold (2012), presented in the Walker’s garden in June 2017. The work, which references the largest mass execution conducted in the US, in which 38 Dakota Indians were killed in 1862 in nearby Mankato, Minnesota, caused an outcry among the Dakota community who accused the museum and the artist of appropriating a painful chapter of their history. The artist later apologised to the community and, following a discussion with the Walker and the Dakota elders, agreed that the work would be dismantled ceremonially burned by the elders.
The names of the committee members will not be revealed until an artist has been chosen to ensure the ‘integrity and focus’ of the selection process. The open call for artists will be announced later this summer, and the new public commission will be installed in the spring of 2020.
23 July 2018
