Music is at the center of WAMplified!, a new late-night series at WAM. Offered three times a year, WAMplified! presents a live performance by a band or musician with a thematic connection to the major exhibition in the galleries.

In conjunction with the WAM exhibition To Have It About You: The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection, Mates of State--featuring husband-and-wife team Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner--headline the inaugural installment on December 12, 2009 (doors at 9 p.m.). Anders Ponders opens. The event also includes food, drink, a video game lounge, and a midnight tour of the exhibition led by curator Diane Mullin and artist Lisa Bradley. Tickets ($22; $18 students and Weisman members) available here or by calling 612-624-2345.

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You'd never suspect they are movers and shakers in New York's insider art world. She's a no-nonsense retired librarian, and he's an ex-postal worker who wears deliberately mismatched clothing. For decades, they've lived in a modest Manhattan apartment with their turtles, fish, cat--and more than 4,000 pieces of conceptual, minimalist, and other contemporary art. Meet Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, whose art collection has been called (by their friend, artist Sol Le Witt) "the most important in the U.S."

A portion of the Vogels' collection is now part of the Weisman Art Museum's permanent collection. Through a gift program designed by the National Gallery of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, works by 50 different artists from the Vogels' collection found a new home at the Weisman this fall. See a slideshow and hear more about the art that came to the Weisman here.

The national gift program has distributed the Vogels' collection of contemporary art throughout the nation, with a hand-picked assortment going to a selected art institution in each of the fifty states. The Weisman was chosen as the Minnesota institution. Artists whose work came to the Weisman include Lisa Bradley, Mark Kostabi, Lucio Pozzi, Alan Shields, Edda Renouf, Richard Tuttle, and many others.

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