Continuing Scalas innovative series of landscape shaped volumes celebrating the architecture of buildings housing art and design, this is a fascinating profile of a contemporary art centre revered throughout the world for the range and vitality of its visual arts, performing arts and media arts programme. Built in Minneapolis in 1971, the Walker Art Center was designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes. Founded by Thomas Barlow Walker, a progressive and eclectic collector of art, the Walker Art Galleries opened to the public in 1927 and the building survived many adventurous and structural evolutions, adapting itself to conceptual changes in the art world and society as a whole. This was entirely appropriate for an Art Center committed to fostering new ways of thinking about, learning from and experiencing the contemporary arts which earnt it the reputation of being among the ten most visited art museums in the United States. A new extension is planned for the center in 2005, designed by Herzog and de Meuron, the architects who designed the Tate Modern.
