page_title: T. B. Walker
section_title: Walker Galleries
hierarchical_section_title: T. B. Walker / Walker Galleries
caption_attribution_description: English: The Art Gallery of Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church in Minneapolis contains several works donated by T. B. Walker to decorate the Sunday school.
context_page_description: Thomas Barlow Walker was an American business magnate who acquired lumber in Minnesota and California and became an art collector. Walker founded the Minneapolis Public Library. He was among the ten wealthiest men in the world in 1923. He built two company towns, one of which his son sold to become part of what is today known as Sunkist. He is the founder and namesake of the Walker Art Center.
context_section_description: Walker built his first house in Minneapolis in 1870, at Ninth Street and Marquette Avenue. In 1874 he built a mansion at 803 Hennepin Avenue. A gallery was open to the public six days a week beginning in 1879 to display his paintings, porcelain, bronzes, jades, ancient and modern high-grade glass, carved crystals, ancient Chinese carved snuff-boxes and ivory carvings. Visitors had to ring at the front door until the home was expanded. The house and its eight additions covered nearly a city block  but were later demolished to build a complex that includes the State Theatre.
  His paintings included 15 American landscapes, 103 portraits of Native American chiefs, medicine men and warriors, and 24 portraits of renowned cowboys, scouts and guides, alongside traditional works by Raphael, Rembrandt, Holbein, Ingres, Titian, Bonheur, Turner and Michelangelo and dozens of other artists. Some of these paintings proved to be fakes and some were genuine—certainly, a landscape by Frederic Edwin Church sold for $8.5 million in a 1989 Sotheby's New York auction.
  In 1915 Walker purchased the 3.5-acre (0.014 km²) Thomas Lowry property on Groveland Terrace including the present Walker Art Center. In 1917 Walker moved into the Lowry Mansion but it was demolished in about 1932. By 1915 the Walker Galleries on 803 Hennepin had 14 rooms, and had about 100,000 visitors each year. In 1926, Walker completed building a new gallery next door to the Lowry Mansion on the site of the present Walker Art Center which opened in 1927. Built by local architects, Long and Thorsov, the original Walker Art Center building stayed open until it was demolished in 1969 to make way for a new building by Edward Larrabee Barnes.
  Speaking of the 25 to 30 people who founded the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, Donald Torbert wrote:
  "Today it is impossible to assess, with anything approaching justice, the worth of the individual contributions, because each person was indispensable. But two, by reason of their energy and position in the community, played leading roles and through their accomplishments left a permanent imprint on the art life of the community. They were William Watts Folwell and Thomas Barlow Walker."
  During the early 20th century, Walker published catalogs of his art collection which he wanted to give to the city of Minneapolis. He presented the deeds to his collection and 3.5 acres (0.014 km²) of land to the library board in 1918. According to the Minnesota Historical Society, the city refused the gift.
  Walker wanted to build a large public library and an arts and sciences institution but the city failed to provide financial support—the Minnesota legislature authorized bonds for $500,000 but only half of them sold. For five years, the city negotiated with Walker but never reached mutual satisfaction, and in 1923 he rescinded the offer. Folwell wrote in his A History of Minnesota, "Walker wisely followed his independent course". Walker Galleries, Inc., was incorporated in 1924, and the T. B. Walker Foundation of today was founded in 1925 to "own and manage the collection and gallery".
  Most of his collection was given away or sold to buy modern works. A gallery across the street at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church holds several of the works in his collection by 16th- and 19th-century European masters, which Walker donated to decorate the Sunday school.
caption: Today, the Art Gallery at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church has several paintings from Walker's collection.
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