Rough bronze casts of plants lie on cotton sheets spread across a gallery floor. Akhavan cast them from plants once native to the land around the Tigris and Euphrates, where many believe the Hanging Gardens of Babylon stood. The work is Study for a Monument, which Abbas Akhavan began in 2013 and is still adding to. It is one of more than a dozen works arriving at the Walker Art Center on November 12 for Abbas Akhavan: Variations on a Garden, which runs through April 18, 2027.
The timing matters to anyone who lives a few blocks from Vineland Place. The Sculpture Garden's art-making program ran June 12 through August 28 and ended with summer. Over the next four months, soil, water and plants will be easier to find in the Walker's galleries than in the programming outside. Between Akhavan's survey and the museum's first Design Triennial, the Walker has brought much of the garden indoors for the winter.
A Garden Survey in Four Galleries
The Walker calls Variations on a Garden Akhavan's first mid-career survey and his first major exhibition in the United States. He is also representing Canada at the 2026 Venice Biennale. Pavel Pyś, the Walker's curator of visual arts and collections strategy, organized the show with the artist, supported by assistant curator Brandon Eng.
According to the museum, the garden is the core idea of Akhavan's practice. He uses it to pair opposites like nature and culture, public and private, wild and domesticated. The exhibition gives special attention to perishable materials such as soil, water and plants, in large works like spring from 2021 and smaller ones like A Study for a Garden from 2014. The largest installations get their own rooms. One of them, curtain call, variations on a folly, recreates the colonnade that once led to the ancient Palmyra Arch in Syria.
One piece already belongs to the Walker. cast for a folly, which the museum acquired in 2025, uses a single documentary photograph to recreate the ransacked lobby of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad after the 2003 invasion. In the Walker's announcement, Pyś describes the work as "deeply moving and elegiac," drawing attention to "our uncontrollable ravaging of the planet, and the erasure of shared commons."
The opening-day talk is free. It's at 6 pm on Thursday, November 12, during the museum's weekly free evening hours.
The Triennial Next Door Runs on Water and Wood
Akhavan's show opens beside an exhibition that has been bringing nature indoors since October 17. Beyond Materialism, the inaugural Walker Design Triennial, runs through February 14, 2027. The Walker says the installed show holds more than 95 works by 26 designers and collectives from 13 countries. Joseph Grima is the guest curator, and Aslı Altay is artistic director.
Several of the Triennial's best-known pieces use the same materials as Akhavan's survey:
- Jonghoo Jeong, System of Atonement, 2025. A tall fountain built from plastic jerrycans that pumps the same water around in an endless loop. According to the Walker, the designer made it as atonement for once pouring toxic byproducts from his own projects into the sewer.
- Maximilian Marchesani, Famiglia series. Light fixtures made from corkscrew hazel, a plant grown for its looks since the mid-1800s, threaded with thin LED bulbs.
- Moon Seop Seo, Passage to the Lake, 2022. A meditative work built on the sound and movement of water.
- Kostas Lambridis, fused before charred, 2023. A large dinner table made by joining about a dozen kinds of found wood.
The show starts with a Shaker Side Chair from about 1820 and documentation of Alessandro Mendini's Lassù (Up There) from 1974, a project in which he burned two identical chairs. In between are Germane Barnes's carved wood Migration Column and Anna Aagaard Jensen's oversized pink Lady Chairs.
The last gallery is the most local. Lucas Muñoz Muñoz's new commission, All Ears, is an immersive installation of Minneapolis's sounds from summer 2026, "capturing the sounds and vibrations of nature, machines, and people." A second commission, by VESSEL, the duo of James Bridle and Navine G. Dossos, focuses on textiles and making things together. Altay says in the Walker's Triennial announcement that the two commissions were "shaped together with communities here in the Twin Cities." The sounds of last summer outside are now on view inside.
The Free Hours That Make It a Neighborhood Habit
Two shows running side by side for months would matter less to a neighbor without the Walker's free hours. Free Thursday Nights run every Thursday from 5 to 9 pm with free admission. Free First Saturday offers family activities from 10 am to 3 pm on the first Saturday of each month, and gallery admission is free all day.
Here is how the next several weeks line up, according to the Walker's listings:
| Date | What's on | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sat, Nov 7 | Free First Saturday: "Designing Together" | Triennial-themed family activities, 10 am–3 pm; Leenalchi performs at 8 pm |
| Thu, Nov 12 | Variations on a Garden opens | Free opening-day talk at 6 pm |
| Wed, Nov 18 | Triennial Member Night | Guided tour for members only |
| Thu, Nov 19 | Learning to Build, Building to Learn: Sewing Studio | Free, 6–9 pm, working with fabric from the VESSEL installation |
| Sat, Nov 21 | Choreographers' Evening | Curated by Ashwini Ramaswamy, 4 pm and 7:30 pm |
| Nov 27–Jan 2 | 2026 British Arrows Awards | Screenings through the holidays |
| Sat, Dec 5 | The World of Ben LaMar Gay | 7:30 pm |
The sewing studio on November 19 is the clearest link between the Triennial and the neighborhood. It turns the VESSEL commission into a free weeknight workshop that falls on a Free Thursday. Some shows are also closing. Olalekan Jeyifous's Hydricosmic Litanies is up through January 3, 2027, so the Free Thursdays before then are the last chances to catch it alongside the two new shows. Martine Syms's collection focus runs through May 23, 2027.
Where a Thursday Night Ends Now
For years, a Thursday at the Walker could end with dinner inside the museum. That routine has changed. The Walker ended its relationship this spring with Cardamom, the restaurant that Daniel del Prado's restaurant group had run in the building since 2021. The decision came after Cardamom announced a move from full service to QR-code ordering. Executive director Mary Ceruti said in the Walker's statement that "our vision has always been to have a full-service dining option within the Walker to complement the museum experience."
The Minnesota Star Tribune reported in April that the museum had begun looking for a new restaurant partner. It also noted the Walker has had a full-service restaurant since 2005, starting with Wolfgang Puck's. For now, the Walker's dining page lists "The Café," with coffee, pastries, sandwiches and salads overlooking the Sculpture Garden. It's open 10 am to 6 pm Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and 10 am to 9 pm on Thursday. It's closed Monday and Tuesday. Walker members save 10 percent on food.
The café's later Thursday hours line up with the free gallery hours, so a sandwich and an evening with Akhavan's bronzes still fit together. For a sit-down dinner afterward, you'll have to leave the campus, which matters more along Hennepin since The Lowry closed this spring.
The Garden Outside Stays Open
The Sculpture Garden doesn't close for the season. The Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board lists its hours as 6 am to midnight, and the Walker says it's free and open every day, all year. The former Cowles Conservatory, which the Park Board now calls the Cowles Pavilion, was converted into an open-air gathering space in the 2016–17 renovation. The Walker's garden map still includes Hand for Minneapolis, dated 2024.
That gives a November Thursday a simple order. Walk past Spoonbridge and Cherry at dusk, go in at 5 pm for free, spend some time with Akhavan's garden and Jeong's fountain, and walk home through a garden that stays open until midnight. Variations on a Garden is on view through April 18, 2027.
Those of us at Josh Zuehlke & Co spend a lot of time thinking about how a place like the Walker shapes the blocks around it, from Lowry Hill to Kenwood. If you'd like to talk about what life near the Sculpture Garden looks like through the seasons, or what it means for your own plans in Lowry Hill, we'd be glad to hear from you.
