Walker Art Center’s Skyline Mini Golf 2021 – Minneapolis, MN

Played on June 19, 2021

Reviewed by the Pink Putter

Between 2014-2019, the Walker Art Center has hosted its take on artist-designed mini golf. Each year, the course changes and evolves. We’ve either designed, built, or helped support part of this project every year it’s been open. We’ve also documented each iteration, which can all be found at on our site by searching the tag Walker Art Center.

This year, they’ve brought back some of our old hole designs as well as added 2 new holes designed by members of the Native Youth Arts Collective.

For this particular round, we were joined by Shannon Dallenbach Durbin, the Director of ArtHaus, a small non-profit art center in Decorah, Iowa.

Rating

We’re always bias when it comes to this course. It’s in our hometown and designed by many artists that we know. It’s fun, colorful and features a number of our own designs. Plus, you can’t beat the view of downtown Minneapolis. While the game play can range from simple to challenging, it is unique and varied. We’re looking forward to playing many more times this summer.

This year’s branding and graphics scheme.

Shannon putting at Hole 2, Turtle Pond. This is one of this year’s new holes and it was designed by Aiyana Kline (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians). The inspiration came from Aiyana’s personal research on her culture and tribe.

Color wheel is back! This was one of our designs from 2019.

“Ball Aboard” is back at the Walker Art Center for the 5th year. It was designed by Michon Weeks and her son back in 2016.

Here I am putting at Hole 6, a new rendition of Chris Cramer’s Reflection of Choices.

View of Holes 7 and 8. Hole 7 is Block Party, one of our designs from 2017 and Hole 8 is Let’s Be Frank, a hole that Tom was part of a charrette team to help design back in 2015.

Kids using Block Party as a little playground, we love it!

View of Holes 9 and 10, Dream Catcher and Piece of Cake.

Dream Catcher is one of this year’s two new hole designs. It was designed by Breanna White (Ojibwe). The dreamcatcher revolves around the idea of catch and release. While creating the work, Breanna consulted with her community, who agreed that the dreamcatcher represents good energy.

Detail of Dream Catcher. The woven web catches bad dreams, similar to how a spider’s web catches insects. In exchange, it releases good energy for better dreams.

View of Hole 7 and Hole 10, both our designs from previous years.

Walker Art Center Skyline Mini Golf website

Pros
Distinct and unique styled holes
Fun colors
Variety of gameplay
All of the holes are well maintained by the museum

Cons
Less than 18 holes
Size of the holes are restricted due to space limitations
Because they were all made by the same fabrication shop, there is a slight lack of distinct personality between each hole

Nerdy Notes