Lowry Hill's Best Walker Weeks This Winter Fall Between Nov. 12 and Jan. 3

If the Walker Art Center is a short walk down the hill from your door, which night this winter is the one to go? The answer depends on the calendar more than on any single show. From November 12, 2026 to January 3, 2027, three special exhibitions share the galleries at once. They won't line up like that again for this long until well into 2027. In that stretch the museum's free Thursday nights aren't spread evenly, and the holidays take more of them than most people would guess.

Three shows, one shared stretch of calendar

Since mid-October, the galleries have held two special exhibitions. Olalekan Jeyifous: Hydricosmic Litanies opened August 6 and closes January 3, 2027. It is the first museum solo exhibition for Jeyifous, an artist, architect, and designer who won the Silver Lion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. The work draws on the many histories of the Mississippi River and on Ben Okri's novel The Famished Road, using sculpture, experimental video, and soundscapes to build what the Walker calls an imagined riverine enclave.

The Walker Design Triennial: Beyond Materialism opened October 17 and runs through February 14, 2027. It is the first edition of the triennial. It brings together more than 20 designers and collectives from more than 10 countries, and seven of them are showing in the US for the first time. Joseph Grima, founder of Space Caviar, leads the curatorial team. The show includes two major new commissions, one by VESSEL, the duo of James Bridle and Navine G. Dossos, and one by Lucas Muñoz Muñoz. Its premise is that design is turning toward the mind, psyche, and spirit after generations focused on the body's functional needs. For anyone who lives in a house built around how a family actually moves through its rooms, that is an argument worth seeing up close.

The third show arrives on November 12. Abbas Akhavan: Variations on a Garden is the artist's first US museum survey, covering 20 years of sculpture and installation. Much of it is built from soil, water, plants, and other perishable materials, and it looks at how conflict reshapes cultural heritage sites. It follows Akhavan's representation of Canada at the 61st Venice Biennale and stays up through April 18, 2027. A garden show indoors, a few steps from a Sculpture Garden heading into a Minnesota winter, makes for an unusual pairing.

Here is how the season lines up:

Collection in Focus: Martine Syms runs underneath all of it and stays on view through May 23, 2027.

Six free Thursdays, not eight

The Walker's galleries are open Wednesday through Sunday. Thursday is the late night, running until 9 p.m., and the museum is closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Gallery admission is free every Thursday from 5 to 9 p.m.

Between November 12 and January 3 there are eight Thursdays on the calendar. Two of them fall on days the Walker lists as annual closures, Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. That leaves six:

1. November 12. Opening day for Variations on a Garden, and the first night all three shows are up together.
2. November 19
3. December 3
4. December 10
5. December 17
6. December 31. Not on the Walker's posted closure list, but check the visit page before you head out on New Year's Eve.

Thanksgiving falls on November 26, which leaves a two-week gap between the November 19 visit and the next free Thursday on December 3. Christmas Eve takes out the following stretch, so December 17 is the last ordinary free Thursday before Hydricosmic Litanies closes. Count on December 31 only once you've confirmed it.

The two Saturdays that bracket the overlap

The Walker's other free day is the first Saturday of every month. Admission is free all day, and family activities run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The next one, on November 7, is themed Designing Together. It falls five days before Akhavan's show opens, so the galleries that day hold two special exhibitions. The two first Saturdays inside the overlap are December 5 and January 2. The Walker hasn't posted themes for either yet. January 2 is the day before Hydricosmic Litanies closes, which makes it the last free admission day for that show.

A holiday program on its own schedule

From November 27, 2026 to January 2, 2027, the Walker presents the 2026 British Arrows Awards, its yearly screening of British commercials. Tickets start at $20, and the Walker's event page lists several venues. Unlike free Thursday, this is a ticketed program, and its run starts the day after Thanksgiving, just as the Thursday calendar thins out.

The related Brits Night is set for Friday, December 4, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., with music, drinks, and a screening. Put it together with the free Thursday on December 3 and the free first Saturday on December 5, and that first weekend of December has the most going on at the Walker of any weekend in the overlap.

The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden runs on no seasonal schedule. It's free and open daily from 6 a.m. to midnight, all year. On a closed Monday or on Christmas Day itself, the Garden is still open even when the galleries aren't.

Dinner afterward is the open question

Here the winter looks different from recent years. In a release dated May 19, 2026, the Walker announced it was ending its relationship with Cardamom, its restaurant, with a wind-down of 60 to 90 days. Cardamom's address was 725 Vineland Place. The Walker's dining page still describes a café serving coffee, pastries, sandwiches, and salads during gallery hours, open until 9 p.m. on Thursdays. In April, the Star Tribune reported that the Walker was searching for a new restaurant partner. The paper's October 5 restaurant roundup lists Cardamom as closed in spring 2026. If a sit-down meal at the museum is part of your plan, check what is actually serving before you go.

The other easy option up the hill has closed too. The Lowry at 2112 Hennepin Avenue served its last meal on April 26, 2026, after 15 years. Bring Me The News reported that the restaurant group cited prolonged Hennepin Avenue construction among its reasons. No new tenant for that address appears in the October 5 roundup.

The construction behind that closing is now finished. In an update dated August 17, 2026, the City of Minneapolis project page says the roadway, bike lanes, and sidewalks on Hennepin Avenue South are open, major construction is substantially complete, and sewer lining wrapped up in fall 2025. Walking from Lowry Hill to dinner on Hennepin this winter means walking a finished street.

After January 3, the calendar thins, then briefly fills again

Once Hydricosmic Litanies closes, the galleries have two special shows for about five weeks. On Thursday, February 11, Douglas R. Ewart: Sound Seeker opens. It is a focused look at four decades of work by the Minneapolis-based artist, including sonic sculpture, instruments, handmade clothing, and Rio Negro II, a piece that combines recorded and live acoustic sound. The Design Triennial closes three days later, on February 14. That makes a second three-show overlap of just four days, and February 11 is its only free Thursday.

The Walker's performing arts season fills the January and February evenings. Chimera runs January 21 to 23, Le Paradoxe de John runs February 4 to 6, and For All Your Life runs February 18 to 20. The January and early February performances start at 7:30 p.m. These are separate ticketed programs, but they give the post-holiday weeks something on the calendar while the galleries are quieter.

The practical takeaway is simple. If you want to see Jeyifous, the Triennial, and Akhavan in one visit, the free Thursday nights are November 12 and 19 and December 3, 10, and 17. December 31 may be one more, and the free Saturdays are December 5 and January 2.

Living close to the Walker is one of the quiet pleasures of a home in Lowry Hill, and planning around its calendar is part of how I think about this neighborhood. If you're weighing a move to the blocks near Kenwood Parkway or want to know how your Lowry Hill home would show in winter light, Erin Sjoquist is glad to talk it through. Let's connect.