Q&A with Olga Viso

Now in her third year as the director of the Walker Art Center, Olga Viso, a Miami-born Cuban who spent much of her career at The Smithsonian’s prestigious Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., is beginning to feel at home in Minneapolis. She hasn’t even seen the Walker’s entire collection yet (there are 12,000 pieces), but she seems intent that eventually we all will.

The New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl once told me the Walker has a  “relentlessly progressive Minnesotan temperament.”
It’s very forward looking in terms of committing to artists really early in their careers. [The MIA and Walker were the first museums to acquire Chuck Close’s work.] When you go through the Benches & Binoculars exhibit you see the portrait of TB Walker, the WPA [Works Progress Administration] collections, and the very first modernist Walker acquisitions in 1940. The federal government identified this museum early on as a place with tremendous community support that wanted to build a world-class cultural city. That’s where the DNA of the Walker started; that was the shift to collect living artists. And I think what distinguishes the Walker’s collection is that it’s not encyclopedic, in the sense that MoMA or some other institutions are, in telling the story of modern contemporary art, but it has great depth in pockets of individual artists.

What are the collection’s strengths?
Jasper Johns, Robert Motherwell, Joseph Beuys, and a lot of the minimalist artists. I would argue that artists give us their best work because they’re not in New York. We get more experimental stuff because they feel safe here.

How much of your job is spent identifying artists and how much is spent raising money? 60/40? 50/50?
Oh, I wish. Unfortunately, 85 percent of my day is focused on community work and working with donors. I see my job as enabling and facilitating the work that the curators and the programmers are doing, so I really rely on my chief curator, Darsie Alexander, who oversees visual arts, and Philip Bither, who oversees performance.

When you say, “I wish,” do you really wish, or is your skill set more geared toward connecting with the business community?
I was a business minor and an art history major. I go see shows and do museum visits, but not at the pace I did when I was running an artistic program. Now I have to rely on my curators. The balance is something directors struggle with all the time. The world, economy, and business have changed so much that a greater percentage of our time is focused on a much more public and donor engagement. But I am installing my first show—a Guillermo Kuitca retrospective—this summer at the Walker. It opens June 25.

Walker After Hours and Rock the Garden have become so popular. It feels like the Walker is more accessible than ever.
I love to hear that. We’ve been working very hard to make people feel invited. We want people to feel that things are dynamic and changing all the time, and you’re not going to see the same thing every time that you come here.

Have you heard MGMT, the  Rock the Garden headliner?
Yes, I have. But to me, it’s an introduction.

MGMT’s new album, Congratulations, is so inaccessible that it might become a commentary on being accessible. Just like the Walker, I suppose: If you have too much accessibility, the core aficionados are going to get pissed off.
It’s a fine line. We obviously want to deepen the relationship with those audiences that are so committed, but we also want to create opportunities for people to feel comfortable when they enter. It’s how you syncopate and program across the year.  

Five Things You Didn't Know About Olga Viso
1. Her significant other, Cameron Gainer, is the artist responsible for the Lake Calhoun monster sculpture.
2. Viso and Gainer adopted three Brussel Griffons named Max, Minerva, and Olivia.
3. She owns a small collection of works on paper and recently purchased a William Villalongo at the Franklin Auction.
4. Viso and Gainer recently bought and renovated a house/home studio on 13th Street in Northeast Minneapolis. “It’s contributed to feeling more settled—we’ve been renting.”
5. She has an Ellsworth Kelly and a Gabriel Orozco from the Walker’s collection
hanging in her office.