Top 10 art events in the Twin Cities in 2024

1. “The New Eagle Creek Saloon” at Walker Art Center

Oakland-based Sadie Barnette’s re-creation of her father’s 1990s era Black-owned gay bar infused the Walker with an energy of celebration, liberation and partying. The “Black gay bar for everyone,” as Barnette called it, included a Thursday Happy Hour.

2. “The Other Four” at Weisman Art Museum

Curated by John Schuerman, this exhibition featured work by 21 artists with a focus not on sight, but rather touch, taste, smell and hearing. The show was a delight for the senses.

3. “American Gothic: Gordon Parks & Ella Watson” at Minneapolis Institute of Art

In 1942, an ambitious young photographer named Gordon Parks created his iconic picture “American Gothic,” paying homage to Grant Wood’s 1930 painting of the same name. Parks’ version captured a weary Ella Watson holding a mop in front of an American flag backdrop. The photo provided a glimpse into her world, and the exhibition featured 60 black-and-white photos.

4. “Together: Leslie Smith III and Dyani White Hawk” at Bockley Gallery

Minneapolis-based MacArthur “genius” grant winner Dyani White Hawk and Madison-based Leslie Smith III’s exhibition coincided with the gallery’s 40th anniversary. The show sparked curiosity and conversations between the two artists’ relationships to abstraction, part of their decadelong friendship.

5. “Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody” at the Walker Art Center

The 1980s art star Keith Haring was known for his fast-paced pop culture style, which began as cartoonish chalk figures on walls in New York City subways and blossomed into full-on murals and more. He even came to the Twin Cities for a residency in 1984. This exhibition came from the Broad Art Foundation in L.A. and featured more than 100 works.

6. “Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room” at Minneapolis Institute of Art

New York-based collector Alice S. Kandell gifted a Tibetan shrine room filled with more than 200 objects dating from the 1300s to the early 1900s to the Twin Cities. This is a permanent exhibition.

7. “Arctic Highways: Unbounded Indigenous People” and “Okizi (To Heal)” at the American Swedish Institute and All My Relations Gallery

Twelve Indigenous artists from Sámi territories, the northernmost parts of Sweden, Finland, Norway and Russia, showed their work at ASI. Concurrently, a variety of Indigenous artists exhibited work at All My Relations that focused on the healing created through cultural revitalization.

8. “Dreaming Our Futures: Ojibwe and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ Artists and Knowledge Keepers” at the University of Minnesota’s Nash Gallery

This exhibition featured 29 midcentury and contemporary Native painters, primarily Dakota and Ojibwe in the region, including MacArthur “genius” grant award winner Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota), beloved Ojibwe artist Jim Denomie and Cole Redhorse Taylor (Dakota).

9. “Sophie Calle: Overshare” at Walker Art Center

French conceptual artist Sophie Calle’s projects spring from boredom, a desire to explore intimacy, a lack of intimacy, a fascination with other people and a deep pleasure in voyeurism. Her exhibition “Overshare,” curated by Henriette Huldisch, spans 50 years of the artist’s work and proposes the idea that Calle might have predicted the rise of social media, where anyone can become a celebrity. Calle’s work probes deeper questions about the human experience such as life and death, love and heartbreak. Ends Jan. 26.

10. “Super Deluxe” at Midway Contemporary Art

Midway Contemporary Art’s new space in northeast Minneapolis used to be a limousine garage, a coincidence that piqued artist Cameron Patricia Downey’s interest. Downey comes from a Midwestern family of Black chauffeurs. Parked in the middle of the gallery is an out-of-use black limousine with a two-channel video inside, relaying a mixture of poetic text and bluesy tunes. Downey, who is a first-year Master of Fine Arts student at Yale University, uses familiar consumer items in her work, such as plastic pickle bags, melted Fla-vor-ice freezer pops, colorful wigs, a PlayStation 2 dance pad and more to discuss the fine line between luxury and performance. Ends Jan. 25.