Skip to main content

Contemporaries Tour the Archives

Allen Ruppersberg does research in the Walker’s library, October 2015. Photo: Gene Pittman, ©Walker Art Center.

Tickets & Info

Tickets & Info

This event has passed Become a member

Allen Ruppersberg is an avid gatherer of things. Over the past 50 years he’s amassed a vast collection of materials—from street posters and comics to old films and records—which he repurposes in his work. For his latest exhibition, Ruppersberg was given free rein of the Walker archives and libraries, allowing him to pore over boxes of files, press clippings, and photographs—items carefully catalogued but rarely seen. Ruppersberg photocopied hundreds of these pieces, transforming them into the fascinating collages.

Take a page from one of Ruppersberg’s many books and explore the Walker library and archives on this members-only private tour. The Medtronic gallery will be open after hours and the Main Lobby will have complimentary small bites, a cash bar, and an art-making station with materials to create your own collage of Walker history.

RSVP here or call 612.375.7655.

Related events

Allen Ruppersberg:

Intellectual Property 1968–2018
Man sitting in front of Ruppersberg artworks

Allen Ruppersberg:

Intellectual Property 1968–2018

Related articles

Collector’s Paradise: Greil Marcus on Allen Ruppersberg’s Rock ’n’ Roll Chronology

Greil Marcus

Visual Arts

Collector’s Paradise: Greil Marcus on Allen Ruppersberg’s Rock ’n’ Roll Chronology

From collaborations with musicians like Terry Allen to his El Segundo Record Club, music has played a vital role in Allen Ruppersberg's art. A keen observer of this thread in his work is critic Greil Marcus, author of music histories including Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989) and The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs (2014). Here Marcus zeroes in on Ruppersberg's passion through Collector's Paradise, a 2012 book that traces rock history through some 1,500 recordings in the artist's collection, from Gipsy Smith's "Saved By Grace" (1909) to Al Green's "Full of Fire" (1975).
Allen Ruppersberg: The Torn-Apart Book

Jan Tumlir

Visual Arts

Allen Ruppersberg: The Torn-Apart Book

In 1978, Allen Ruppersberg offered his friends and supporters a chance to be in a novel he aimed to write: $300 would buy a “leading character,” $150 a “major character,” and so on. As the work progressed, he had the Colby poster company make posters listing the names of those who had signed up for the project, which served as gifts to his donors, coming attractions–type announcements, and works of art in their own right. The novel was never completed, but as Jan Tumlir writes in this essay from Rupperserg's The Novel That Writes Itself, "something clicked," and from this point onward the iconic Colby posters became a regular feature in his work.

Dates & Tickets

No dates are currently available for this event.