smow blog compact: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis present Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia

In our post from the exhibition Art Nouveau. The Great Utopian Vision at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg we stated, with a certain degree of authority, that “No one likes a hippy”

The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis obviously do and are celebrating that fact with the exhibition Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia.

Subtitled “An Examination of the Radical Art, Architecture, and Design of 1960s & 1970s Counterculture” the Walker Art Center’s exhibition promises to explore “intersections of art, architecture, and design of the counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s” and aims to do through a presentation of period films, paintings, architecture, installations and furniture from and by artists, architects and designers such as Archigram, Ant Farm, Ken Isaacs, Evelyn Roth or Ira Cohen.

We’ve not seen the exhibition, it does however sound very interesting, as does the accompanying fringe programme which includes films, family events and talks from amongst others Günter Zamp Kelp from the experimental architecture collective Haus-Rucker-Co.

In our post from The Great Utopian Vision we noted the comparisons between art nouveau and hippydom, the Walker Art Center exhibition would appear to underscore such a comparison and thus promises to make visiting both, and comparing and contrasting the arguments presented, a rewarding and enlightening experience.

And yes, we are aware of the double meaning of enlightening……

Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia runs at the Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55403, USA until Sunday February 28th

Full details can be found at www.walkerart.org

Ken Isaacs, Superchair (1967) Part of Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis