Walker Art Center's Target Free Thursday Nights in December Include Opening-Day Discussion and Reception for <em>Some Assembly Required</em> Exhibition

The Walker Art Center’s Target Free Thursday Nights in December are highlighted by an Opening-day Panel Discussion and Reception for the exhibition Some Assembly Required: Contemporary Prefabricated Houses, on Thursday, December 8, 6:30 pm. Visitors can enjoy complimentary hors d’oeuvres and meet the architects and designers featured in the exhibition. The same evening, the Walker book club, The Artist’s Bookshelf, returns with a discussion of Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation, at 7 pm. Other highlights in December include gallery and architecture tours, a screening of Ang Lee’s Ride with the Devil (December 1, 7:30 pm), and Games of Chance, an Art Lab activity inspired by the exhibition House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective (December 1, 6–9 pm).

Target Free Thursday Nights are made possible by Target.

Target Free Thursday Nights

December 1, 8, 15, 22, and 29
Galleries open 5–9 pm; special events follow.
Free

Thursday, December 1

Gallery tour, 6 pm

Games of Chance, 6–9 pm

Star Tribune Foundation Art Lab
Huang Yong Ping made 4 paintings created according to random instructions (1985) with a roulette wheel derived from the Chinese compass first used in 12th century BC. Using a multi-disc wheel constructed in a similar fashion, create your own work of art by chance.

The Artist’s Bookshelf, 7 pm

Conference Room
Participation is free, but space is limited and reservations are required. Call 612.375.7600.
Andy Warhol was one of the first American artists to investigate our cultural obsession with celebrity and disaster. Author Sarah Vowell’s latest book takes up the task in this month’s book club session. Part travelogue, part history lesson, and part self-deprecating stand-up comedy routine, Assassination Vacation documents Vowell’s pilgrimage to various assassination sites in the United States. But beneath its hip veneer, the volume delves deeply into America’s fascination with violence and stardom.

Find this book in the Walker Shop, The Friends of MPL Bookstore, or check out a copy at a Minneapolis Public Library. www.mplib.org.

Presented in partnership with The Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library.

Film: Ang Lee’s Ride with the Devil, 7:30 pm

Cinema
Missouri, the only slave-holding state that fought with the Union during the Civil War, was the site for skirmishes between Kansas Jayhawkers and Missouri Bushwackers who wanted to preserve their way of life. A rare tackling of the war from a Southern perspective, the film is marked by its sharp attention to detail. Its “real métier is a texture of fine-grained observation that brings history to life on the molecular level” (Sight and Sound). 1999, U.S., color, 35mm,
138 minutes.

Thursday, December 8

Architecture tour, 6 pm

Some Assembly Required: Contemporary Prefabricated Houses

Opening-day Panel Discussion and Reception, 6:30 pm

Gallery 8 Café
Free, but ticket required; available from 5:30 pm at the Bazinet Garden Lobby desk
Meet the architects and designers featured in the exhibition and join Michael Sylvester, founder of the Web site fabprefab.com and one of the leading proponents of modern modular architecture, for a discussion about contemporary prefab. Complimentary hors d’oeuvres and cash bar will be available.

Thursday, December 15

Prefabricated Houses Tour, 6 pm

Thursday, December 22