Walker Art Center Welcomes M. Gessen, Rhiannon Giddens, and Kara Walker to the 2026 Mack Lecture Series
MINNEAPOLIS, November 25, 2025—The Walker Art Center announces the next season of its Mack Lecture Series, a signature program that convenes leading changemakers from across disciplines to explore the most pressing issues of our time through the lens of art and culture. The 2026 lineup features National Book Award–winning author and journalist M. Gessen, two-time GRAMMY and Pulitzer Prize–winning musician Rhiannon Giddens, whose work has reshaped how we understand politics, history, and American music, and internationally acclaimed artist, professor, and MacArthur Fellow Kara Walker
The Mack Lecture Series brings together filmmakers, musicians, writers, academics, and advocates whose practices are transforming their fields and public discourse. Through dynamic formats—including lectures, moderated conversations, and audience Q&As—the series creates space for rigorous inquiry, storytelling, and community connection.
Over its history, the Mack Lecture Series has hosted visionary speakers whose ideas have resonated far beyond the art world, underscoring the Walker’s role as a platform for contemporary thought and cultural innovation. Past speakers include Sterlin Harjo, Sadie Barnette, Rukmini Callimachi, and Claudia Rankine.
MACK LECTURE: M. GESSEN
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
Walker Cinema
The Mack Lecture Series presents best-selling author, journalist, and National Book Award winner Masha Gessen.
An indispensable voice of this moment, M. Gessen examines our shifting political climate with exacting precision, exposing the underlying systems—past and present—that affect every part of our lives. Addressing topics including autocracy, gender, and politics, Gessen’s expansive body of work underscores the dangers of totalitarianism and the importance of shared humanity.
With sharp wit and researched analysis, the public scholar joins the Walker for a critical discussion of contemporary sociopolitical realities. They outline what in American society has changed and what is at stake, from our health to our families to our democracy.
A short, moderated dialogue and Q&A will follow Gessen’s presentation. A pop-up bar will open in the lobby starting one hour before the lecture.
ABOUT M. GESSEN
One of our most incisive observers of democracy, M. Gessen is the author of eleven books, including the essential Surviving Autocracy and the National Book Award–winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. An Opinion columnist at the New York Times, they have covered political subjects including the Russian state, LGBTQ+ rights, and the rise of autocracy.
Gessen spent many years as a staff writer for the New Yorker, where they were recognized with the George Polk Award for opinion writing in 2024. In 2022, they cofounded the Russian Independent Media Archive, a digital archive focused on preserving the past two decades of independent Russian journalism. As a scholar, they have taught widely and currently serve as the first Distinguished Professor at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Their commitment to rigorous research and scholarship has earned them a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Nieman Fellowship, an Overseas Press Club Award, and more.
Gessen is based in New York, where they have lived since 2013, after having spent over 20 years as a journalist and editor in Moscow.
MACK LECTURE: RHIANNON GIDDENS
Sunday, November 1, 2026
Walker Cinema
The Mack Lecture Series welcomes singer and multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens for a deep dive into the history and evolution of American popular music.
Known for fearlessly tracing America’s musical history, Giddens amplifies voices that are often sidelined. Drawing on the rich tradition of Black Americana, Giddens casts her singular blend of roots, country, and blues music into forms as wide-ranging as opera, film, and dance. Since her breakthrough as cofounding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the critically acclaimed artist has garnered two Grammys, a Pulitzer Prize, and a MacArthur “Genius Grant.”
At the Walker, Giddens offers insight into the stories and traditions that continue to shape the trajectory of American music today. A foil to widespread cultural amnesia, Rhiannon Giddens reminds us what it means to remember.
A short, moderated dialogue and Q&A will follow Giddens’s presentation. A pop-up bar will open in the lobby starting one hour before the lecture.
ABOUT RHIANNON GIDDENS
Rhiannon Giddens braids musical histories, living traditions, and contemporary sensibilities into a visionary approach to storytelling. Advocating for a deeper understanding of America’s musical roots, she uplifts the artistic contributions of communities that are often overwritten.
A founding member of the landmark Black string band Carolina Chocolate Drops and all-female banjo supergroup Our Native Daughters, Giddens is as much a curator as she is a creator. Her body of work encompasses recorded music, live opera, ballet, and film. She has won two Grammy Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, and a MacArthur Fellowship and has garnered critical acclaim from outlets including Pitchfork, NPR, and American Songwriter. In 2024, her banjo work featured prominently on Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em,” which rose to number one on the Billboard Hot 100. In addition to her career as a recording artist, Giddens also serves as the Artistic Director of the Yo-Yo Ma–founded Silkroad Ensemble and hosts the PBS show My Music with Rhiannon Giddens.
Rhiannon Giddens grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, and splits her time between North Carolina and Limerick, Ireland.
MACK LECTURE: KARA WALKER
Wednesday, May 6, 2026
Walker Cinema
The Mack Lecture Series presents internationally acclaimed artist, professor, and MacArthur Fellow Kara Walker.
Known for her uncompromising examinations of race, gender, sexuality, and power, Kara Walker has spent over thirty years critiquing the stories America tells about itself. Her ongoing work on the legacies of violence in America invites audiences to confront the deep imprints of colonialism’s legacy on contemporary life.
Most recently, Walker curated the exhibition MONUMENTS, co-presented with MOCA and The Brick. Acknowledging the recent wave of monument removals as a historic moment, the exhibition considers the ways these sculptures and iconography have shaped national identity.
Boldly addressing these unprecedented times, Walker reflects on the cultural stakes of the present moment, considering how artists influence public memory, how institutions steward difficult histories, and how the narratives embedded in monuments, literally and figuratively, reveal the fractures and possibilities of our society.
A short, moderated dialogue and Q&A will follow Walker’s presentation. A pop-up bar will open in the lobby starting one hour before the lecture.
ABOUT KARA WALKER
New York-based artist Kara Walker is best known for her candid investigation of race, gender, power, and national mythologies via her signature cut-paper silhouettes. Born in Stockton, California in 1969, Kara Walker was raised in Atlanta, Georgia from the age of 13. She studied at the Atlanta College of Art (BFA, 1991) and the Rhode Island School of Design (MFA, 1994). She is the recipient of many awards, notably the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award in 1997 and the United States Artists, Eileen Harris Norton Fellowship in 2008. Walker is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (elected 2012) and American Philosophical Society (elected 2018) and was named an Honorary Royal Academician by the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 2019.
Walker’s work is in the collection of prominent museums and public collections throughout the United States and Europe, including the Kunstmuseum Basel’s Kupferstichkabinett (Department of Prints and Drawings); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Tate Gallery, London; the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo (MAXXI), Rome; and the Deutsche Bank Collection, Frankfurt. Her site-specific, multipart installation Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine) is on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through May 2026. Walker is co-curator of MONUMENTS at The Brick and MOCA, Los Angeles, which explores the reverberating legacies of post-Civil War America through a presentation of decommissioned monuments and contemporary works. For the exhibition, Walker transformed an equestrian bronze of General “Stonewall” Jackson, formerly displayed in Charlottesville, into Unmanned Drone (2025)—a chimerical vision of Confederate violence. The base of the Jackson monument became the foundation for accompanying silhouette tableaux, presented with Unmanned Drone at The Brick.
ABOUT THE MACK LECTURE SERIES
The Mack Lecture Series at the Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary platform for artists, thinkers, and cultural leaders whose work confronts the critical issues of our time. Centering “changemakers at the forefront of their fields,” the series invites filmmakers, environmental lawyers, musicians, writers, and scholars into dialogue with audiences, emphasizing how art and culture shape—and are shaped by—broader social, political, and environmental realities.
Each event in the series is designed to move beyond a traditional podium lecture. Programs may include moderated conversations, poetry readings, and other experimental formats, as well as post-program Q&As that encourage audience participation and reflection. In many cases, the Walker extends the experience through community-focused programs such as workshops and student engagement initiatives that deepen understanding of each speaker’s work and its impact.
Rooted in a long history of visionary speakers whose ideas have influenced fields from contemporary art and film to climate policy and media representation, the Mack Lecture Series continues to reaffirm the Walker’s commitment to supporting bold ideas, fostering dialogue, and connecting diverse publics through culture.
ABOUT THE WALKER ART CENTER
The Walker Art Center is a renowned multidisciplinary arts institution that presents, collects, and supports the creation of groundbreaking work across the visual and performing arts, moving image, and design. Guided by the belief that art has the power to bring joy and solace and the ability to unite people through dialogue and shared experiences, the Walker engages communities through a dynamic array of exhibitions, performances, events, and initiatives. Its multiacre campus includes 65,000 sq. ft. of exhibition space, the state-of-the-art McGuire Theater and Walker Cinema, and ample green space that connects with the adjoining Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The Garden, a partnership with the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board, is one of the first urban sculpture parks of its kind in the United States and home to the beloved Twin Cities landmark Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Recognized for its ambitious program and growing collection of more than 16,000 works, the Walker embraces emerging art forms and amplifies the work of artists from the Twin Cities and from across the country and the globe. Its broad spectrum of offerings makes it a lively and welcoming hub for artistic expression, creative innovation, and community connection.
The Mack Lecture Series is made possible by generous support from Aaron and Carol Mack.