Helio Oiticica and Neville D'Almedia's "Block-Experience in Cosmococa--Program in Progress (1973) as seen on a tablet.

In 2005 when Walker Art Center published the most recent catalogue of its 12,000 piece collection, the 616 page volume was years in the making and covered a mere fraction of the center's holdings. Film, video, music, dance and other performance activities-- which are a key part of the Minneapolis' institution's program-- were described but not as thoroughly represented as paintings, sculpture and other objects.

A new "Living Collections Catalogue" aims to be more interactive, flexible, and responsive to the multidisciplinary focus of the collection. The web-based project will be accessible via laptop, smartphone, a tablet computer or other digital devices. Published in serial form, the segments will include documents, original interpretations from scholars commissioned by the Walker, and a variety of media resources about selected work from the collection.

The first segment, "On Performativity," deals with performance-based work in relationship to the visual arts. Scholars Philip Auslander, Shannon Jackson, and Dorothea von Hantelmann provide an overview of contemporary performance. Individual works in the collection are discussed by Elizabeth Carpenter, Eric Crosby, Peter Eleey, Bartholomew Ryan, and Irene Small. Multimedia material enhances their comments.

Artists whose work is explored in "On Performativity" include dancer/choreographer Trisha Brown, installation artist Helio Oiticica, filmmaker Neville D'Almedia, performers Eiko & Koma, mixed media installation artist Tino Sehgal, and an Anthropometry painting by Yves Klein.

The current exhibition "Art Expanded, 1958-1978, will be explored in a future segment.The online catalogue is supported by grants from the Getty Foundation as part of its "Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative (OSCI) which supports similar programs at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Seattle Art Museum and the Tate Gallery.