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“The biggest transformation is how we’re conceiving of social engagement with our audiences,” says Olga Viso, who became director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in January 2008. “We are working out the strategy for engaging in a much deeper way and a multiplicity of ways. It’s about breaking down boundaries.”

Ms. Viso offered two recent examples. First, the Walker is staging “Open Field” on its grounds this summer, a “cultural commons” where artists and the public alike may create, perform, discuss books or current affairs, attend demonstrations or just watch everyone else. From its “Tool Shed,” the Walker lends radios, blankets, playing cards, sketch pads, scissors and even iPads. Second, through Sept. 15, the public has been invited to vote on which works on paper, drawn from the Walker’s collection, will be shown in its “50/50: Audience and Experts Curate the Paper Collection” exhibition this December.

Some of the curators, Ms. Viso concedes, are not comfortable with that concept, but she stresses that it’s just one display, which the curators will install. In any case, she believes that “curators will have to share their research differently” henceforth. They’ll have to Twitter, blog, work across curatorial departments and take a larger approach to their job. “We are actively in the process of updating their job descriptions,” she says.

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