About the Walker Collection

The Walker Art Center’s Visual Arts Permanent Collection originated with holdings amassed by Thomas Barlow Walker, our institution’s founder. T. B. Walker collected an eclectic variety of objects, from European and American oil paintings to Chinese jades, Japanese ivory netsuke, and ancient Greek vases, all of which were on loan from his descendants. In 1940, with the support of T. B. Walker’s heirs and help from thousands of Minneapolis residents, a newly renamed Walker Art Center opened to the public. The Walker’s mission, and by extension its acquisition priorities, would focus on the art of the present moment. The collection pivoted toward acquiring works by artists of the day, such as Franz Marc, Lyonel Feininger, I. Rice Pereira, and Edward Hopper; in time virtually all items acquired by T. B. Walker were deaccessioned, or removed from the collection. Under the purview of each Walker director—Daniel Defenbacher, H. Harvard Arnason, Martin Friedman, Kathy Halbreich, Olga Viso, and Mary Ceruti—the collection has embraced new acquisition priorities, resulting in a diverse and textured mid-sized collection with areas of thematic depth and monographic concentration.

Artworks have the capacity to tell stories and offer insights into an artist’s own personal experience. The Walker is committed to building its collection to reflect a diverse range of narratives and forms of lived experience. A multiplicity of voices and perspectives enriches and nourishes our collection, generates dialogue across cultures and communities, and, eventually, builds a collection in which more people from various backgrounds see themselves reflected. The curatorial team actively pursues acquisitions that challenge historically dominant identities and speak to the interconnected nature of social categorizations (such as race, class, gender identity, sexual identity, and disability). These works may reflect intimate stories and circumstances or investigate larger social issues, such as systemic forms of inequity and institutional systems that have perpetuated discrimination or disenfranchisement.

Like many US museum collections, the demographic profile of the Walker’s collection skews in representation toward white US male artists. For example, of the 50 artists with works held in numerical depth, only two identify as BIPOC and 10 identify as women artists. This imbalance is also true when considering the number of works in the collection, given the Walker’s historical pattern of collecting many artists in great depth and acquiring entire artist’s archives. For example, the 50 artists held in depth represent almost 50 percent of all works held in the Walker’s collection. In recent years, the curatorial team has intentionally moved away from pursuing numerical depth toward focusing on acquisitions that represent the breadth of an artist’s practice.

Demographic information about artists is collected via the Artist Questionnaire document, issued to artists upon the accessioning of their work into the collection. Providing information is entirely voluntary, and every question offers the opportunity to choose a designation as well as ample space for self-determination. The Walker first started sending questionnaires in 1999; considerable revisions between 2020 and 2023 followed to reflect greater complexity and nuance. Building on cross-institutional dialogue among many US museums at this time, the Walker aligned its questionnaire with the Association of Art Museum Curators Best Practices in Artist Demographic Data Coordination handbook. All demographic information is reported in aggregate and not traceable—unless an artist explicitly chooses so—to a specific individual. The Walker is committed to ensuring that any demographic information communicated about the collection reflects how artists have chosen to self-identity. Demographic information is gathered with each new acquisition, and the curatorial and registration teams have and continue to consistently reach out to artists already represented in the collection. In terms of race and ethnicity, 25% of artists identified as white, 12% identified as BIPOC, while 62% preferred not to answer, marked “other” or have not responded. In terms of gender, 68% identified as male, 23% identified as female, while 9% preferred not to answer, identified as non-binary, marked “other” or have not responded. In terms of sexual orientation, 9% identified as heterosexual, 6% identified as gay, lesbian, queer, bisexual, or “other” while 85% have not responded.

While developing the collection, the curatorial team actively tracks demographic measures across all collection purchases on a quarterly basis in a consistent effort to build greater representation of artists who identify as BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, women, gender non-conforming, neurodivergent, and with disabilities. In six years of acquisitions between 2018 and 2023, on average, each year half of purchased works have been by BIPOC artists, while 60 percent of works purchased were by women and gender-nonconforming artists. The Walker’s curatorial and registration teams consider the Artist Questionnaire a living document that is continually updated in close dialogue with artists and museum peers.

Occasionally, the Walker removes artworks from its collection, in a process known as deaccessioning. The Walker abides by the Association of Art Museum Directors policies in instances of deaccessioning. The process begins with careful curatorial research and due diligence and includes thorough discussion with the Acquisitions Committee and Board. Artworks are formally deaccessioned following the recommendation of the Acquisitions Committee and then after Board approval.

Deaccessioning is a standard procedure and form of collection maintenance. Deaccessioning occurs in various instances, such as when artworks are discovered to be fraudulent, found to exist in duplicate, are irreparably damaged or in a condition that makes conservation or public presentation unfeasible, or are no longer consistent with the mission or collecting goals of the museum. Once deaccessioned, an artwork may be dispersed through exchange (for another work by the same artist), sale, gift, or destruction. Funds received from the sale of such artworks cannot be used for operations or capital expenses and may only be used for the acquisition of works in a manner consistent with the museum’s policy on the use of restricted acquisition funds.

Key deaccessions in the Walker’s history include:

• In 1988, a duplicate print by Helen Frankenthaler, which was sold at the height of the market to establish a fund for the acquisition of prints.
• In 1989, several works by mid-19th-century Hudson River School artists deemed to be out of the purview of a contemporary collection were auctioned. Auction proceeds were used to create the endowment for the T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, which annually yields the largest draw for Permanent Collection purchases.

• In 1999, a duplicate of Ellsworth Kelly’s White Curves I (1978), an editioned metal wall sculpture, to make an exchange with the artist (along with a partial gift of funds) for Drawing Cut into Strips and Rearranged by Chance (1950), an early collage from a period of Kelly’s practice not previously represented in the collection.
• Between 2023 and 2025, numerous duplicate and triplicate prints, mid-century outdoor bronze sculptures, and unique paintings and sculptures; some works had multiple copies, while unique works were of duplicated subject matter and date. The funds received through the deaccessioning process raised the value of endowed funds reserved for acquisitions by 25 percent.