Walker Art Center hosts the work of Jessi Reaves in her first major museum show

Museum Executive Director Mary Ceruti was impressed with the ways Reaves explores both design and art history. The post Walker Art Center hosts the work of Jessi Reaves in her first major museum show appeared first on MinnPost.

As I sat with Mary Ceruti on white sofas in the Walker Art Center’s Cargill Lounge, sunlight streamed on her face through the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Minneapolis landscape outside. It gave her a kind of glow. I asked the museum director if the sun was bothering her eyes, but she seemed content to look at the sculptures that dot the Walker’s grounds.

“I have been known to complain that they bought so much sculpture and didn’t leave me a lot of room,” she told me jokingly when I asked her if she had plans for new additions to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. “But there are a few spots. We’re always sort of on the lookout for the right additions to the sculpture garden.” She added that she felt proud of bringing in the Angela Two Stars commissioned piece “Okciyapi,” as well as John McCracken’s “Magic,” a gift from a patron.

Ceruti and I had met to talk about “Jessi Reaves: process invented the mirror,” now on view at the museum. It’s the New York-based artist’s first solo museum show and the second exhibition Ceruti has curated for the Walker.

The first was “Liz Larner: Don’t Put it Back Like It Was,” which first opened at the SculptureCenter in New York, where Ceruti had previously been executive director and chief curator before coming to the Walker.

Related: Mary Sully’s transformational repetition

“That was in my first year, which is a really different experience, frankly, because that was a big survey exhibition of an artist with decades of work, whereas this is a much smaller exhibition,” she said. “It’s one body of work that Jessi made for the show, so it was a different kind of curatorial project that’s probably a little more manageable for me with my other duties.”

Ceruti told me it felt “great” to dive into curating again. “If you’re charged with overseeing something, to keep your toes in the actual thing is really important,” she said. “It felt good to be in the gallery installing work with our crew, and understanding how great our crew is.”

Ceruti had also brought Reaves to the SculptureCenter back in 2016, with an exhibition of two pieces in a small project room. “She had just started to show a little bit in New York,” Ceruti said. That same year, Reaves had her first solo gallery show at the Bridget Donahue gallery, and would be included in the Whitney Biennial the next year.

Ceruti was taken with the way Reaves plays with both design and art history. “It’s playful, it’s humorous, but there’s also sort of a rigor to it that I think pushes us to think about how these objects live in our lives and what they mean to us,” she said.

Ceruti told me she felt Reaves was ready for the opportunity to have her first solo museum show. “She’s been showing her work for a little over 10 years, and she hadn’t had a major solo museum show, and I thought it was time,” Ceruti said.

Reaves’ work holds a tension between functionality and absurdity. In her early showings in a gallery context, visitors were allowed to actually sit on furniture the artist had created, something that’s not possible at the Walker. At the same time, Reaves’ work has grown even more absurd over time, Ceruti said.

“The embellishment and the ornamentation has become more present, whereas I think the earlier work was a little more about dissection of these forms,” Ceruti said.

The new exhibition at the Walker draws on both vernacular designs like the 18th century “bachelor stool” (a combination step stool, seat and ironing board) and on high-end designs like the “Miss Blanche” chair by Shiro Kuramata. The latter design featured roses that seemed to float in a clear acrylic chair made with acrylic glass, first made in 1988.

Reaves combines both in “Bachelor’s stool with fake flowers (after Kuramata)” (2025), a work that transforms the bachelor stool design into a kind of shelving unit that also has an altar appearance. Reaves’ similar “My eyes are down here (bachelor’s stool)” (2025), gets adorned with a suggestive female figure. Ceruti tells me it’s interesting that both pieces “feminize” the historic object originally designed for men.

Another piece, “Street Lamp” (2025), similarly references familiar objects, with a twist. “It has this odd red light that probably wouldn’t do you much good,” Ceruti said. The sculpture also features decorative welded designs, and a plastic hair clip transformed into ornamentation. The civic gray paint contrasts with the George Nelson-esque mid-century paper lanterns.

The walls of the exhibition are surrounded by a large, mural-sized backdrop based on a Works Progress Association (WPA) mural, Reaves stretched and gray-scaled the image, which was then painted at her direction by Minneapolis artist Whitney Terrell. It isn’t presented as a standalone artwork but as an atmospheric stage-set for the sculptures that reminds viewers of art’s entanglement with labor and history.

Ceruti noted the resonance with the Walker’s own history: “Our second founding was through the Federal Art Project,” she said. “It went from being the private collection of the Walker family to this public-private partnership thanks to federal funding.”

Today, federal support for the arts is far more limited, and political pressures, including anti-DEI measures, pose new challenges for museums.

Ceruti, however, remains focused on the museum’s mission rather than external pressures. “We have a racial equity committee for the board, we have equity action plans,” she said. “From a leverage perspective, the federal government is not an existential threat to us. From a reputational position, we have just decided — we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing.”

She reflected on how the first years of her tenure were a period of settling in. “It always takes longer than you think it should, and then the pandemic hit, and George Floyd was murdered, and that was just a lot to manage through,” she said. “But in the meantime, the senior leadership team is mostly people I hired — all but one.”

Under her leadership, the Walker has retooled how exhibitions are presented, aiming to make the museum feel more inclusive and welcoming. “We try really hard to make the way we talk about the shows and how we contextualize the art accessible to a much broader audience,” she said.

At times, the efforts to narrow in on audience experience have run counter to interests of gallery staff, as gallery assistants strongly object to new requirements that they stand for their shifts rather than sit on stools. Back in April, the Walker’s union staged a protest over what they said was union busting — a charge the Walker denied.

“Different people have different ideas about how you best serve the public,” Ceruti said, adding the museum works through union channels with front-of-house staff who are represented by AFSCME. “I think our team is quite open and responsive in that context. But we’re also in a moment of people wanting to be heard, not just by their institution, but by the public, too. They have every right to make their case,” she said.

As for the museum, Ceruti centers her vision on visitor experience, which includes thought to the balance of exhibitions presented. Reaves’ work in Gallery C/Burnet succeeds Pan Daijing’s theatrical sound and video installation, and a colorful painting show before that. Plus, Reaves’ work is “a nice mix of what else we had in the building right now,” Ceruti said. The idea is to offer a variety of experiences for visitors.

“Jessi Reaves: process invented the mirror” runs through Jan. 24, 2026, at the Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Place, Minneapolis ($18 gallery admission). More information here.