The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
Near Minneapolis St Paul, Minnesota
The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden opened in September nineteen eighty-eight on land adjacent to the Walker Art Center, and at eleven acres it is one of the largest urban sculpture gardens in the United States. It was designed as a collaboration between the Walker, which is a contemporary art museum, and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, which owns and maintains the land.
The most recognized work in the garden is Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's Spoonbridge and Cherry, installed at the garden's opening. The spoon is fifty-two feet long. The cherry on its end weighs one thousand two hundred pounds. The work sits in a reflecting pool designed to incorporate it. Oldenburg and van Bruggen were known for monumental sculptures of everyday objects. This one became so thoroughly identified with Minneapolis that the city adopted a version of it in civic imagery.
The Walker Art Center opened its first dedicated museum building in nineteen twenty-seven, founded by T.B. Walker, a lumber baron who had been collecting art since the eighteen eighties. It is one of the oldest visual arts institutions in the upper Midwest. A major expansion designed by Herzog and de Meuron opened in two thousand five, adding gallery space and reshaping the museum's relationship to the sculpture garden and the surrounding neighborhood.
The garden is free and open year-round. In winter, the Spoonbridge and Cherry sits among bare trees and snow, which Oldenburg reportedly considered an entirely acceptable viewing condition.
