Walker Art Center

With an incredibly comprehensive collection, the Walker art museum in Minneapolis enables visitors to follow trends and movements from the dawn of modernism onward, this mammoth catalogue makes clear. For example, one can trace biomorphism from Arp's rounded marble sculptures to Miro's small totemlike bronze Head and Bird to the floating evanescent forms in William Baziotes' oil, Opalescent. Pioneer modernists are well-represented: Egon Schiele, Franz Kline, Charles Sheeler, Marsden Hartley and Stuart Davis among them. But it is in contemporary painting and sculpture that the collection excels, with works ranging from Jennifer Bartlett's enamel-on-steel paintings to Claes Oldenburg's metallic icons to the expressionistic ``New Figuration'' of artists like Susan Rothenberg and Richard Bosman. Featuring hundreds of color plates along with six essays by Walker director Friedman and other art historians, this album will reward both browsers and serious students of art. (Apr.)