Some couples splurge on cruises to mark their silver anniversaries. Others just reaffirm their vows and carry on, which is pretty much the approach of Walker Art Center and the AIGA, a professional design association. For the past 25 years, Minnesota's premier contemporary art center and its top design group have partnered to produce Insights, an annual lecture series that's a big-deal showcase for cutting-edge design and communication concepts.
"We had a lot of trauma because of the 25th anniversary," said Andrew Blauvelt, the Walker's curator of architecture and design. "But finally we decided to do what we've always done, which is to bring in some people from down the street and around the world."
Launched in 1986 when "postmodernism" was the buzzword du jour, Insights has been around long enough to embrace both new digital technologies and a revival of mid-20th-century design. The popularity of "Mad Men," for instance, has given a whole new gloss to skinny ties, martini glasses and '60s typography. The show also has stimulated design consciousness by insinuating the field's history and concepts into its plots.
"There's a whole awareness of 'branding' products, for example, though they didn't call it that then," Blauvelt said. "They identify women, teens and, later, African-Americans as potential 'markets,' so they're tapping into this history about advertising, and it's fun to see that come to life."
That resonates in the Twin Cities, which is among the nation's more design-savvy cities, Blauvelt said. In addition to having an unusual abundance of nationally known ad firms, Minnesota is home to a strong modernist tradition in architecture, exemplified by the work of Julie Snow, Vince James and David Salmela, among others.
"Architectural practice here has always had modernist continuity and never got sidetracked by that postmodernism of the '80s," Blauvelt said. "And it's more relevant now than at any time previously."
Some of that forward-looking traditionalism played into the selection of the five Insights guests who will speak at the Walker:
March 1: Kevin Quealy, New York Times graphics editor, whose team produced a clever Tetris-style interactive chart for readers to solve the U.S. budget deficit.
