The Walker Art Center announces the relaunch of Mn Artists, a platform for locally focused, interdisciplinary arts writing. Now at mnartists.walkerart.org, the digital publication champions Minnesota’s artist community by nurturing arts writing and relationship building.
Mn Artists centers artistic risk, experimentation, and interdisciplinary forms of making, with a particular focus on the arts of our time. The publication features essays, reviews, interdisciplinary writing, news, and conversations, and maintains the most comprehensive listing of artist opportunities in the state. Mn Artists supports a range of perspectives and nurtures constructive criticism, contributing to lively, professional discussion in the local arts ecosystem.
Mn Artists was initiated by the Walker Art Center and the McKnight Foundation in 2001 as a hub for Minnesota artists of all disciplines and career stages to share their work online and connect to each other. A social network that launched years before the advent of social media, the initiative was forward-thinking in its digital strategy and responsive to the current needs of working artists. Mn Artists provided a free resource for some 30,000 artist and arts organization users for 20 years, with more than 1 million site visitors annually.
As both digital media and the Minnesota arts landscape have evolved, the Walker Art Center has refocused its commitment to the regional artist community. Mn Artists responds to a current gap in the local arts ecosystem: the need for more rigorous, responsive arts writing. Through Mn Artists, the Walker will leverage its position as an international, interdisciplinary contemporary art center to forge connections between locally rooted artistic practices and broader conversations in contemporary art, while spotlighting the rigor and vitality of the local arts scene.
