Show & Tell
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
November 20, 2025 – April 5, 2026
The Walker Art Center will open an interactive exhibition designed specifically for children ages four to nine, inviting one-of-a-kind play and learning among some of the museum’s youngest visitors. Titled Show & Tell, the exhibition features artworks from the Walker’s renowned collection that connect with kid-friendly subjects such as animals, alphabets, food, miniature worlds, and imaginary creatures. Among the artists included are Fischli/Weiss, Katharina Fritsch, Jeffrey Gibson, Cas Holman, Caroline Kent, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Yinka Shonibare, and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Presented in a vibrant, specially designed environment, the exhibition emphasizes participatory, hands-on exploration and encourages kids to engage their senses and imaginations.
Show & Tell continues the Walker’s approach to leveraging its growing collection to engage audiences in new and compelling ways. It follows the institution’s multi-part presentation Make Sense of This, which featured collection works and invited visitors to provide feedback on content that they might like to see in the galleries, and the complete reimagining of the Walker’s collection galleries, under the title This Must be the Place. The new collection galleries, which opened last summer, took learnings from Make Sense of This and grounded the presentation in accessible and resonant themes relating to the idea of “home.” Show & Tell also reflects the Walker’s commitment to cross-disciplinary collaboration, with the exhibition resulting from the joint efforts of the institution’s Visual Arts, Moving Image, Design, and Public Engagement, Learning, and Impact teams.
Show & Tell engages young visitors through distinct zones, designated by lively graphics that empower kids to have fun and create meaning on their own terms:
● FIND: This zone is anchored by a bespoke wall, which invites visitors to discover artworks by peering through an array of porthole windows, behind which artworks are installed in cavities within the wall. The wall engages with surprise and gameplay, allowing kids to move between the portholes to encounter a range of works, including sculptures, videos, and sound works by artists, including Mark Bradford, Katharina Fritsch, Claes Oldenburg, Yinka Shonibare, and Daniel Spoerri.
● READ: This zone focuses on the power of storytelling. Featuring comfortable seating, READ includes a selection of illustrated children’s books that families can listen to or read together. Interactive activities in the space as well as artworks by Julie Buffalohead, Andrea Carlson, Amy Cutler, and Jacob Lawrence encourage families to imagine and tell their own stories.
● PLAY: This zone focuses on hands-on interaction through two major installations: Mama Critter (2024) by Cas Holman and Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Untitled 2006 (pavilion, table, and puzzle representing the famous painting by Delacroix La Liberté Guidant le Peuple, 1830). Mama Critter is an arched structure that invites crawling, sliding, and building, as well as engagement with smaller elements called “Baby Critters” and “Thingies” that are moveable and alter the playscape in real time. Tiravanija’s large-scale work allows families to sit together at a picnic style table to work on a monumental jigsaw puzzle.
● MAKE: Taking a cue from colorful abstract works in the exhibition by such artists as Jeffrey Gibson and Caroline Kent, this zone includes a play table with color transparencies that allow kids to experiment with composition, color, and light. An interactive projector in the space makes it possible for the young artists to project their creations onto the gallery walls. Additionally, this zone features an interactive installation, in which visitors, inspired by the artist Erwin Wurm’s drawings, are invited to transform themselves into “one-minute sculptures” by donning colorful, oversized sweaters and using their bodies and the clothing to create new forms and poses.
● WATCH: This section offers a kid-friendly cinema space with a curated selection of films from the Walker’s Ruben/Bentsen Moving Image Collection, which includes more than 1,000 titles. With generous seating for children and their adults, the space offers a place to relax and engage in family-friendly films that range from short narratives to animations.
Access and comfort ground the experience of Show & Tell. The majority of artworks are presented at low heights, and multi-sensory discovery is prioritized. Ample seating, an open floorplan, and phone charging locations consider the needs of parents and caregivers within the space. An audio guide narrated by local elementary school students offers a unique exploration of the exhibition, while the labels and family activity guide help prompt kids to connect their own experiences to the artworks on view. Label copy is also offered in English, Spanish, Hmong, and Somali to accommodate different family needs.
CURATORIAL TEAM:
Visual Arts: Siri Engberg, Senior Curator and Director of Visual Arts, and Pavel Pyś, Curator of Visual Arts and Collections Strategy; Moving Image; Patricia Ledesma Villon, Assistant Curator of Moving Image.
Show & Tell is organized jointly by the Walker’s Visual Arts, Moving Image and Public Engagement, Learning, and Impact staff members including Amanda Hunt, Head of Public Engagement, Learning, and Impact, Sarah Lampen, Associate Director of Learning and Accessibility, Janine DeFeo, Manager of Interpretation, La’Kayla Williams, Manager of School and Gallery Programs, Hannah Novillo Erickson, Manager of Lifelong Learning and Accessibility.
WALKER ART CENTER, MINNEAPOLIS
