The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the U.S.: together with the adjacent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and the Cowles Conservatory, it has an annual attendance of around 700,000 visitors.he museum's permanent collection includes over 13,000 modern and contemporary art pieces, including books, costumes, drawings, media works, paintings, photography, prints, and sculpture.

The Walker Art Center began in 1879 as an art gallery in the home of lumber baron Thomas Barlow Walker.Walker formally established his collection as the Walker Art Gallery in 1927. With the support of the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration, the Walker Art Gallery became the Walker Art Center in January 1940. The Walker celebrated its 75th anniversary as a public art center in 2015.

The Walker's new building, designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes and opened in 1971, saw a major expansion in 2005. Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron's addition included an additional gallery space, a theater, restaurant, shop, and a special events space.

The visual arts program has been a part of the Walker Art Center since its founding. The program includes an ongoing cycle of exhibitions in the galleries as well as a permanent collection of acquired, donated, and commissioned works. Since the 1960s, the Visual Arts program has commissioned works from artists to exhibit and held residencies for artists including Robert Irwin, Glenn Ligon, Barry McGee, Catherine Opie, Lorna Simpson, and Nari Ward.

The Walker's collection represents works of modern and contemporary art, especially focused after 1960. Its holdings include more than 13,000 pieces, including books, costumes, drawings, media works, paintings, photography, prints, and sculpture. In 2015, the Walker celebrated the 75th anniversary of its founding as a public art center with a yearlong exhibition Art at the Center: 75 Years of Walker Collections. Some collection highlights include:

Live performance art is a major part of the Walker's programming and it is seen as a leader in exhibiting the medium.In 1940, the Walker began presenting local dance, poetry, and concerts, largely organized by volunteers. By 1963, this group had become Center Opera, the Walker's performing arts program focused on exhibiting new works emphasizing visual design. In 1970, Center Opera disbanded from the Walker and became the Minnesota Opera. The same year, Performing Arts was officially designated as a department of the Walker Art Center.

Since the 1960s, Performing Arts at the Walker has commissioned 265 performance works.In addition, the department programs a 25-show season every year that includes performance art, theater, dance, spoken word, and music.It is one of the nation's largest performing arts programs of its kind found in a museum. A number of artists have long histories working with and performing at the Walker, most notably choreographers Bill T. Jones, Meredith Monk, and Merce Cunningham, for whom the Walker staged the retrospective Life Performs Art in 1998. As a longtime associate of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Walker was able to acquire 150 art objects central to the company's history from the Cunningham Foundation in 2011. The agreement included sculptures, sets, costumes and other works by artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

The Walker's film and video programs feature both contemporary and historical works. In the 1940s, the Walker identified moving images (mostly movies, but also experimental films) as integral to contemporary life. Artists of that time were experimenting with film's formal properties, such as light, motion, and sound, while also separating film art from conventional narrative cinema.

In 1973, the Film/Video Department was officially formed and the Edmond R. Ruben Film and Video Study Collection was established, along with an endowment to fund the development of the archive. Ruben, a leading figure in film exhibition in the Upper Midwest, and his wife, Evelyn, believed in collecting films as a way of preserving the art form. Today, with more than 850 titles, the Ruben Collection brings together classic and contemporary cinema as well as documentaries, avant-garde films, and video works by artists.

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