Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

The site has had several lives. The Walker describes land shaped by glaciers more than 10,000 years ago, once marshy, and home to the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples. The park board bought the land around 1900, when it was known as the Parade and used for military drills. Superintendent Theodore Wirth laid out a formal design that included the Kenwood Armory, and the grounds became known as the Armory Gardens. A floral convention in 1913 turned the land into floral gardens that lasted about fifty years. The armory was demolished in 1934 because of structural instability, and sports fields followed; Parade Stadium was built in 1950.

The garden opened in 1988 to a design by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes with landscape architects Quinnell and Rothschild. After Parade Stadium was demolished, it grew by about 3.5 acres in the early 1990s with a northern extension by Michael Van Valkenburgh and Associates, which has a more open layout and the 300-foot Alene Grossman Memorial Arbor. The Walker calls it one of the first major public-private urban sculpture parks of its kind in the United States; it also bills itself as the country's largest urban sculpture garden, a superlative best treated as the institution's own claim.

The Walker says the garden holds more than 60 works by artists from ten countries, while Wikipedia's count of permanent installations is lower, so the total depends on how rotating pieces are counted. Spoonbridge and Cherry, made by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen between 1985 and 1988, is a fountain in aluminum and stainless steel that sprays water; the Walker lists its overall size as about 354 by 618 by 162 inches. Sources agree the cherry weighs roughly 1,200 pounds but give differing weights for the spoon.

Other works named by the Walker include LOVE, Walking Man, Angela Two Stars's Okciyapi (2021) and pieces by Alexander Calder and Theaster Gates. Gates's Black Vessel for a Saint (2017) was his first permanent outdoor sculpture, according to Wikipedia, and Katharina Fritsch's blue rooster Hahn/Cock was installed in 2017. Ask the Walker which works are currently on view, since placements change.

The Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge, designed by Siah Armajani and completed in 1988, carries pedestrians over Hennepin Avenue and I-94 toward Loring Park. It spans roughly 375 feet over 16 lanes of interstate traffic, and bears a poem by John Ashbery across its beams. Wikipedia reports that the Minnesota Department of Transportation restored it in 2018, replacing the wooden deck, repainting it in consultation with Armajani, installing the lighting from the original design, and re-lettering the poem in metal.

The garden was reconstructed in 2016 and 2017 and reopened on June 10, 2017, unifying the Walker and the garden into a roughly 19-acre campus. Because the area was once marsh, the work focused on water: an underground cistern near Spoonbridge and Cherry supplies the garden and nearby ball fields, and the Walker says it keeps more than 4 million gallons of runoff a year out of storm sewers. A fresh meadow of native plants and engineered soils absorbs runoff around three sculpture islands, and the Walker reports more than 300 native trees, shrubs, perennials and grasses that provide habitat for birds, butterflies and other wildlife. Vineland Place between the Walker and the garden was also narrowed.

The Walker's own site gives current hours and events. Spoonbridge and Cherry is the obvious photo stop, but give yourself time to wander the lawns and the bridge to see more of the collection. On a Voyzo private tour of Minneapolis-Saint Paul, your driver can combine it with other stops without anyone circling for parking.