After the controversy over sculpture gardens, the Walker Art Center forms a committee of aboriginal art

The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is establishing the Aboriginal Public Art Selection Committee in collaboration with a group of Aboriginal curators, artists and cultural professionals. Its members, who have requested that their names and affiliations not be released at the present time, are currently working with the Walker to commission an Aboriginal artist to create a work for his sculpture garden

. the wake of controversy surrounding a work of art that he planned to unveil in his new sculpture garden inaugurated last year. The piece, Scaffold, 2012, made by artist Sam Durant in Los Angeles, was a two-story sculpture inspired in part by the gallows where thirty-eight Dakotas were hanged in Mankato in 1862. Shortly after installation, the museum was criticized for appropriating an incredibly painful story for the Dakota Nation

. After an intense public outcry, the institution worked with a group of Dakota elders to address the problem. In the end, an agreement between the Dakotas, Walker and Durant was reached, and Scaffold was dismantled and ceremonially buried by the nation. In response to the turmoil caused by the job, former executive director of Walker, Olga Viso, said, "I regret the pain that this work has caused to the Dakota community and to others. This is the first step in a long process of healing.

At the time, Durant also made a statement in which he apologized to the Dakota nation and admitted that he and the museum should have joined their community before going from the front with plans to expose the work. The artist first created the piece to address "the difficult stories of the racial dimension of the criminal justice system in the United States". After protests at the museum in May 2017, Durant transferred intellectual property rights to the work. first exhibited in 2012 in Europe in The Hague in the Netherlands and then in Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany, to Dakota elders.

According to the museum, "in order to maintain the selection process with integrity and focus," the names of committee members will not be disclosed until an artist has been chosen. The open call for artists will be announced later this summer and the new public works will be installed in the spring of 2020.

Siri Engberg, senior curator and director of exhibition management at Walker, said: "We are extremely lucky to be working with the expertise, knowledge and creative thinking of this committee, which collectively will help bring a new important artwork to the Walker Art Center Collection and Twin Cities. "