More than a century has passed since Walker Art Center founder and lumber baron Thomas Barlow Walker opened the doors of his home in 1879 to share his vast collection of art and antiques with the community.  The first public art gallery west of the Mississippi, the newly minted Walker Galleries filled several rooms of a grand mansion on the site of this building.  Amassed over the course of nearly two decades, T.B. Walker’s collection was shown in the style of the most fashionable salons of New York and Europe, with works displayed from floor to ceiling in one gilded frame after another.

Visually evoking this formative moment, Benches & Binoculars borrows from nearly every time period in the institution’s history, showcasing a cacophonous composite of styles, genres, subjects, and techniques. At once highly organized and a visual jumble, the exhibition offers fascinating instances of synchronicity and aesthetic discord. What is striking about these diverse representations of times and tastes is the profusion of uncanny coincidences that emerge.  Many of the works on view have not been seen for decades, and a number of paintings make their 21st-century debuts here, raising questions about changing tastes over time and what it means to be “contemporary.

For more about  Benches & Binoculars, read an article by Walker's Chief Curator, Darsie Alexander.