Walker Art Center Presents Choreographers’ Evening 2019

A Night of 11 Experimental Dance Works Plus 2 Preshow Performances Curated by SuperGroup

Celebrating Minnesota dance and performance while expanding a post-Thanksgiving tradition at the Walker, this year’s Choreographers’ Evening is curated by SuperGroup—the deliriously inventive performance collaboration of Erin Search-Wells, Sam Johnson, and Jeffrey Wells. The evening features a diverse array of 13 fresh, provocative, compelling, and experimental works by ever-evolving local dancemakers.

Choreographers’ Evening 2019 features Emily Gastineau, Erika Hansen, Mathew Janczewski, Cecil Neal, Leah Nelson, Margaret Ogas, Sharon Picasso, Eva Reed and Piper Rolfes, Kayla Schiltgen, Judith H. Shuǐ Xiān, Deja Stowers, Shanan Tolzin and Kristina de Sacramento, and Julie Warder.

SuperGroup. (from left) Erin Search-Wells, Sam Johnson, and Jeffrey Wells. Photo Credit: Bobby Rogers, Courtesy of Walker Arts Center)

On curating the evening, SuperGroup said, “We chose the pieces for Choreographers’ Evening based on our group instinct. From years of creating together, we’ve developed a strong interest in performance that is densely layered; work that considers a multitude of complex issues in a multitude of ways and leaves room for disagreement and incongruity. In some ways, we approached curating this evening as we might the creation of our own work—looking for ways that varied content, forms, and concepts can coexist and converse. Reorganizing how we see the world by building, contradicting, engaging, and reflecting with and for each other.”

2019 Choreographers; Evening Grid (Photo Credit: Bobby Rogers. Courtesy: Walker Arts Center)

Pre-show Performancesm 3:30 & 6:30 pm
Come early to experience a preshow featuring two performances by Erika Hansen and Leah Nelson that take place in the public spaces or lobby of the McGuire Theater (locations to be announced). Both pieces occur concurrently on a loop for the duration of the preshow. Then take a seat in the theater for a showcase of 11 performances.

ABOUT SUPERGROUP

2019 Choreographers Evening Portrait of SuperGroup by Bobby Rogers. L-R: Erin Search-Wells, Sam Johnson, and Jeffrey Wells. Courtesy of Walker Arts Center

SuperGroup, a performance collaboration of Erin Search-Wells, Sam Johnson, and Jeffrey Wells), a Minneapolis-based performance collaboration. Since forming in 2007, they have presented work at venues across the Twin Cities including the Bryant Lake Bowl, the Red Eye, Bedlam Theatre, the Ritz, and the Walker Art Center, as well as nationally at the Invisible Dog Art Center (NYC, presented by the Joyce Theater), Velocity Dance Center (Seattle), Philadelphia Dance Projects/Temple University (Philadelphia), and ODC (San Francisco). Their work has been supported through commissions from the Walker Art Center, the Red Eye Theater, and the Southern Theater, and through grants from the Jerome Foundation, the SCUBA Touring Network, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council of MN, the MN State Arts Board, and the McKnight Foundation. The group’s latest projects include: Research COUNCIL, an episodic series of 10 shows happening monthly at the Bryant Lake Bowl; COUNCIL, a new performance that will be developing in part through a MANCC residency in 2020, and the recently published performance score/script In Which _______ and Others Discover the End, co-created with Rachel Jendrzejewski and available through Plays Inverse

Exhibition To Watch in 2020: Making The Met, 1870–2020

In 2020, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will celebrate the 150th anniversary of its founding with a dynamic range of exhibitions, programs, and public events. Highlights of the year will include the exhibition Making The Met, 1870–2020, on view March 30–August 2; the opening of the newly renovated and reimagined galleries devoted to British decorative arts and design in March; the display of new gifts throughout the Museum; a three-day-long celebration in June; and a story-collecting initiative. (More information is available at www.metmuseum.org/150.)

The centerpiece of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 150th anniversary celebration will be the exhibition Making The Met, 1870–2020. On view March 30–August 2, 2020 in the Second Floor Tisch Galleries, the presentation is a museum-wide collaboration that will lead visitors on an immersive, thought-provoking journey through The Met’s history. Organized around transformational moments in the evolution of the Museum’s collection, buildings, and ambitions, the exhibition will reveal the visionary figures and cultural forces that propelled The Met in new directions, from its founding in 1870 to the present day.

Making The Met, 1870–2020 is made possible by the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation. Lead corporate sponsorship is provided by Bank of America.

The exhibition will feature more than 250 works of art of nearly every type from The Met collection, including visitor favorites and fragile treasures that can only be displayed from time to time. The selection will span millennia—from an imposing seated statue of the Egyptian queen Hatshepsut (ca. 1479–1458 B.C.) to Jean Pucelle’s Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux (ca. 1324–28) to El Anatsui’s monumental Dusasa II (2007)—and media—from Michelangelo’s sheet of Studies for the Libyan Sibyl to Degas’s bronze Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer to Edward Steichen’s photographs of The Flatiron. Its global reach will extend from Asia, with exceptional works such as Mi Fu’s Night-Shining White, to Africa, with the Fang Seated Female Figure from a Reliquary Ensemble, and the Americas, with the Crown of the Andes.

Making The Met, 1870–2020 will explore a range of intriguing topics, such as the educational and aspirational ideals of The Met’s founders; the discoveries and dilemmas of excavation; the competing forces of progressivism and nationalism that led to the founding of the American Wing; the role of the Museum during wartime; and the evolution at The Met’s centennial toward a truly global approach to collecting. Rarely seen archival photographs, innovative digital features, and stories of both behind-the-scenes work and the Museum’s community outreach will enhance this unique experience.

Young 19th- and 21st-century viewers gaze at Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851, by Emanuel Leutze. Left: Archival photo from The Met archives. Right: Photo by Roderick Aichinger. Composite image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Exhibition Overview

The exhibition will be organized in ten chronological sections around a central axis, called The Street, that will situate visitors in time and offer glimpses into the inner workings of The Met and, exceptionally, out into Central Park.

The first section, The Founding Decades, will transport visitors back to the Museum’s early years. The Met was founded without art, a building, or professional staff—it had only the vision of a group of businessmen, civic leaders, and artists determined to elevate the cultural landscape of the city of New York. This gallery will reveal the initial priorities for the collection, including antiquities excavated from Cyprus by The Met’s first director, General Luigi Palma di Cesnola, and European old master paintings from the founding purchase of 1871. It will also call attention to the contributions of artist trustees, such as Frederic Edwin Church, and the surprising diversity of early acquisitions, from Toltec reliefs to Japanese armor.

In the early 20th century, The Met sought to reach audiences beyond the traditional elite museumgoers and created study rooms to inspire a new generation of designers, craftspeople, and students. In keeping with an increasingly encyclopedic vision for the collection, ephemeral and utilitarian objects were acquired in addition to masterpieces. The exhibition’s second gallery, Art for All, will spotlight three collections—musical instruments, textiles, and prints and drawings—and the visionary curators, Frances Morris and William Ivins, who oversaw them.

In the same era, under the guiding influence of J. Pierpont Morgan, president of the Board of Trustees, The Met began to aspire to the model of the great collections formed by European royalty and aristocracy. Princely Aspirations will feature objects prized for their rarity and beauty that were given to the Museum by tycoons of the Gilded Age, such as Benjamin Altman and Collis Huntington. Highlights include Johannes Vermeer’s Young Woman with a Lute, Antonio Rossellino’s Madonna and Child with Angels, 18th-century decorative arts that once adorned French palaces, and a Kunstkammer of precious objects. This section will look ahead to more recent benefactors, such as Robert Lehman and Charles and Jayne Wrightsman, who carried forward this spirit of collecting.

The Met Announces Celebrations for Its 150th-Anniversary Year in 2020

The exhibition Making The Met, 1870–2020 will present more than 250 works of art from the collection while taking visitors on a journey through the Museum’s history.

The reopening of the galleries for British decorative arts and design will reveal a compelling new curatorial narrative.

Transformative New Gifts, Cross-Cultural Installations, And Major International Loan Exhibitions Will Be On View Throughout The Year.

Special Programs And Outreach Will Include A Birthday Commemoration On April 13, A Range Of Public Events June 4–6, And A Story-Collecting Initiative.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced the key components of its 150th-Anniversary Celebration in 2020, including major gifts of art from around the world; exhibitions and displays that will examine art, history, and culture through spectacular objects; and dynamic programs that will engage The Met’s local and global communities. Highlights of the year include the exhibition Making The Met, 1870–2020, the opening of the newly renovated British Galleries, the display of new works of art given to the Museum in honor of its 150th anniversary, the launch of cross-cultural installations, a robust schedule of programs and events, and more.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens—businessmen and financiers as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day—who wanted to create a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. Today, The Met displays tens of thousands of objects covering 5,000 years of art from around the world for everyone to experience and enjoy. The Museum lives in three iconic sites in New York City— The Met Fifth Avenue (located at 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, New York, NY 10028), The Met Breuer (located at 945 Madison Ave at 75th Street, New York, NY 10021), and The Met Cloisters (located at 99 Margaret Corbin Drive, Fort Tryon Park, New York, NY 10040). Millions of people also take part in The Met experience online. Since its founding, The Met has always aspired to be more than a treasury of rare and beautiful objects. Every day, art comes alive in the Museum’s galleries and through its exhibitions and events, revealing both new ideas and unexpected connections across time and across cultures. metmuseum.org

The Met Fifth Avenue (located at 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, New York, NY 10028) (via www.metmuseum.org)

“The Museum’s anniversary is an occasion to celebrate this extraordinary institution, and appreciate the vibrancy and astounding depth and scope of its collection, scholarship, and programs.” — Daniel H. Weiss, the Museum’s President and CEO

Daniel H. Weiss, the Museum’s President and CEO, said, “As we celebrate this milestone occasion, 150 years since our founding on April 13, 1870, we are grateful for the bold vision of our founders, who included a handful of New York City leaders and artists of the day. Over the course of the next 150 years, that vision grew into one of the most important cultural institutions in the world. This anniversary is an exciting moment to celebrate what The Met means to its audience, from the New Yorkers who enjoy the Museum regularly, to the millions of tourists who walk through our doors every year, to those who experience our offerings remotely. It is also an opportunity to reflect on our history, to plan thoughtfully for our future, and to say thank you.”

The Met Breuer (located at 945 Madison Ave at 75th Street, New York, NY 10021) (Via www.metmuseum.org)

He further adds, “The Museum’s anniversary is an occasion to celebrate this extraordinary institution, and appreciate the vibrancy and astounding depth and scope of its collection, scholarship, and programs. This moment is also a time to think deeply about our responsibilities as stewards of this exceptional resource, our commitment to cultivating the understanding and appreciation of art, and the ways in which we can illuminate the connections within cultural histories. The Met strives to be a seminal encyclopedic museum—of the world, for the world, and in the world—and we are grateful to everyone who supports us in achieving that goal.”

The Met Cloisters (located at 99 Margaret Corbin Drive, Fort Tryon Park, New York, NY 10040) (via www.metmuseum.org)

Making The Met, 1870–2020

The centerpiece of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 150th anniversary celebration will be the exhibition Making The Met, 1870–2020. On view March 30–August 2, 2020, the presentation is a museum-wide collaboration that will lead visitors on an immersive, thought-provoking journey through The Met’s history. Organized around transformational moments in the evolution of the Museum’s collection, buildings, and ambitions, the exhibition will reveal the visionary figures and cultural forces that propelled The Met in new directions, from its founding in 1870 to the present day. It will feature more than 250 works of art of nearly every type from The Met collection, including visitor favorites and fragile treasures that can only be displayed from time to time. A range of intriguing topics will be explored, such as the educational and aspirational ideals of The Met’s founders; the discoveries and dilemmas of excavation; the competing forces of progressivism and nationalism that led to the founding of the American Wing; the role of the Museum during wartime; and the evolution at The Met’s centennial toward a truly global approach to collecting. Rarely seen archival photographs, innovative digital features, and stories of both behind-the-scenes work and the Museum’s community outreach will enhance this unique experience. The exhibition will have an audio guide and be accompanied by a catalogue. More information is available at metmuseum.org/Making-The-Met.