Performance Talks with Philip Bither

This episode of Performance Talks is a conversation with Philip Bither, Senior Curator of Performing Arts at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, who oversees one of the country's leading contemporary performing arts programs.

In this conversation, he and I talk about the Walker’s long history with commissioning and presenting live work, the evolving relationship between performance and visual art, and the ongoing questions around how to preserve liveness. And, maybe most importantly, we look at what it means to support artists over time—and why that matters.

Philip Bither has overseen significant expansion of the Performing Arts program, including the building of the McGuire Theater, an acclaimed new theatrical space within the Walker expansion (2005), the raising of the program's first commissioning/programming endowment, the commi ...