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Siah Armajani: Follow This Line

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Siah Armajani: Follow This Line is the first comprehensive US retrospective devoted to the work of Minneapolis-based artist Siah Armajani. Born in Tehran in 1939, Armajani moved to Minnesota in 1960 to attend Macalester College in St. Paul. He has lived and worked in the Twin Cities ever since, while exhibiting internationally.

Armajani is best known today for his works of public art—bridges, gazebos, gardens, reading rooms—sited across the United States and Europe. Near the Walker, the artist’s landmark 375-foot Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge connects Loring Park to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. This groundbreaking exhibition spans six decades of the artist’s studio practice and engages a range of references—from Persian calligraphy to the manifesto, letter, and talisman; from poetry to mathematical equations and computer programming; from the Abstract Expressionist canvas to the vernacular architecture of rural America, Bauhaus design, and Russian Constructivism. The exhibition is accompanied by a major catalogue published by the Walker Art Center.

Siah Armajani: Follow This Line is co-organized by the Walker Art Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Curators: Curated by Clare Davies, Assistant Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey (Metropolitan Museum of Art); with Victoria Sung, Assistant Curator, Visual Arts (Walker Art Center); assisted by Jadine Collingwood, Curatorial Fellow, Visual Arts (Walker Art Center).

Tour Dates

  • Walker Art Center, Minneapolis | September 9, 2018–December 30, 2018
  • The Met Breuer, New York | February 20–June 2, 2019

Funding

Siah Armajani: Follow This Line is organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Lead support for the catalogue and the Walker Art Center’s presentation of the exhibition is provided by Lannan Foundation.

 

<p>Funding</p>

Major support for the Walker’s presentation is provided by Judy Dayton, the Martin and Brown Foundation, the Prospect Creek Foundation, and Margaret and Angus Wurtele. Additional support is generously provided by Dolores DeFore, Nor Hall and Roger Hale, Miriam and Erwin Kelen, Anita Kunin, Donald McNeil and Emily Galusha, Mary and John Pappajohn, Jaleh and Patrick Peyton, Joanne Von Blon, Annette and John Whaley, and Penny Winton. Additional catalogue support is provided by Rossi & Rossi.

Related events

Artist Talk: Siah Armajani

Artist Talk: Siah Armajani

Performance: Slavs and Tatars

Performance: Slavs and Tatars

Gallery Tours: Siah Armajani

Gallery Tours: Siah Armajani

Silent Reading Party

Silent Reading Party

Related articles

Slavs and Tatars: Siah Armajani, Red-Black Thread, and the Art and Act of Reading

Slavs and Tatars: Siah Armajani, Red-Black Thread, and the Art and Act of Reading

"Reading is a civic act. As much as we are suckers for the oral, the written word manages to constitute a social body in ways too often lacking today: a rigor in terms of focus, a polyphony of voices." In conversation with designer Aryn Beitz, the Berlin-based art collective Slavs and Tatars discusses its contributions to the Siah Armajani: Follow This Line exhibition and catalogue, both of which strive to attain what it claims Armajani has mastered: the ability to engage and create a public by suggesting reading, without actually requiring it.
The War of Sovereign Identities: Surveying the International Cultural Landscape for Iranians Today

The War of Sovereign Identities: Surveying the International Cultural Landscape for Iranians Today

Using her father's 1979 passport as a touchstone, US-based Iranian contemporary art scholar Golnar Yarmohammad Touski looks at the recent history of the country artist Siah Armajani left behind when he moved to Minnesota in 1960 and the cultural and political realities faced by Iranians working internationally in the arts today.
Under Wraps: What’s Happening with the Walker’s Siah Armajani Bridge?

Under Wraps: What’s Happening with the Walker’s Siah Armajani Bridge?

Weekend travelers to downtown Minneapolis this month will meet an impasse on Interstate 94, marked by an ominous sight: all lanes of traffic closed and the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge—crossing from the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden to Loring Park—encased in plastic. Here's what's going on.
Not a Conduit but a Place: John Ashbery Reads his Poem for Siah Armajani’s Bridge

Not a Conduit but a Place: John Ashbery Reads his Poem for Siah Armajani’s Bridge

On the occasion of John Ashbery's passing on September 3 we share audio of the famed poet reading his Walker-commissioned poem, a site-specific meditation on movement, place, and order that since 1988 has graced the 375-foot expanse of Siah Armajani's bridge over the interstate highway.

Dates & Tickets

No dates are currently available for this event.