1927 T.B. Walker opens Walker Art Galleries to house his $5 million art collection. He dies a year later.

1940 Galleries change name to Walker Art Center, focus on contemporary art, begin selling founder's collection.

1946 Walker begins publishing the first U.S. museum design journal, Everyday Art Quarterly (later Design Quarterly).

1961 Martin Friedman becomes director; his 30-year term is longest in the center's history.

1963 Walker helps launch Center Opera Company (later Minnesota Opera) when it stages the arts center's first performing arts commission, Dominick Argento's opera "Masque of Angels," in 1964.

1968 Andy Warhol's "Sixteen Jackies" is acquired.

Photograph of artist Marcel Duchamp at the Walker Art Center with director Martin Friedman, 1965. Courtesy the Walker Art Center Archives.

1970 Performing arts department established.

1971 New Walker building, designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes, opens.

1973 Film/video department established.

1980 "Picasso:  From the Future Musée Picasso, Paris" exhibit puts Walker on international art map.

1988 Minneapolis Sculpture Garden opens in partnership with the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board.

1990 Clint Eastwood inaugurates Regis Dialogues series of film retrospectives and interviews.

2005 Herzog & de Meuron-designed addition opens.

2011 Merce Cunningham Dance Company's 3,000-piece archive is acquired, the culmination of a 48-year relationship with the Cunningham troupe.

Mary Abbe