Walker receives grant to assist impaired visitors

St. Paul, Minn. — The Walker Art Center will receive $50,000 to develop programs for visitors with Alzheimers disease and for visitors who are visually impaired.

The grant from the MetLife Foundation will be used to develop hands-on art labs, train tour guides and develop new tours.

The Walker's Assistant Director of Education Tour Programs, Courtney Gerber, said the programs developed under the grant will likely lead to programs for other groups too.

"And it just allows us to continue to ask ourselves 'What does community mean, what does audience mean, what does diversity mean when you are talking about audience?' And this is really allowing us to be leaders in audience engagement and it's pretty exciting," Gerber said.

Gerber said pilot programs are already underway at the Walker, and the program will be formally launched sometime next summer.