#Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

[hclib]

Spoonbridge and Cherry

Claes Oldenburg, renowned artist and co-creator of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden's Spoonbridge and Cherry, died this week at age 93. Oldenburg was famous for large sculptures depicting common objects.

Oldenburg's Spoonbridge and Cherry (created in collaboration with his wife Coosje van Bruggen) has been the centerpiece of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden since it opened in 1988. The grand opening (program pictured in lower right) included vendors selling cherry sundaes, the chance to play the spoons in a group Spoon Band concert, and supplies to make floatable sculptures to sail beneath the Spoonbridge.

In the press release for Spoonbridge and Cherry's unveiling, Oldenburg shared his thoughts on his famous sculpture: "The way the cherry throws itself into the air, it suggests a ship drawing up on shore."

Photos from M/A 0255 Collection on the Walker Art Center and the City of Minneapolis Collection in the Hennepin County Library Digital Collections (C39602 and C00759).

#minneapolis #minnesota #minneapolis sculpture garden #spoonbridge and cherry #sculpture #claes oldenburg #1980s #walker art center #minneapolis parks

[ilovejoyjessie]

the “Hidden Figures” series

+ Photographed by @skyclad.studio (ig) // website

Back in the before times, in 2019, I took a trip to Minneapolis for a concert on New Year’s Eve. With literally 30 hours in the city, I landed on the 31st at 9am, headed to the concert at around 9pm - had a transcendent time - then back to the hotel afterwards. The next day, I had about 5 hours to kill before having to head at the airport to return home. I asked the front desk for a late checkout - they obliged - and at noon I left my room with 3 hours still until I had to hit the road.

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When I can squeeze it into a trip to a new place, I try to make a visit to an art museum or botanical attraction in the area. I looked to see what was nearby and fatefully, the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden - home of the Spoonbridge & Cherry and the notable Hahn/Cock - was a short drive from the hotel. I hailed a ride and hopped in, made lively banter with my driver, then soon enough stepped out of the car and down a set of steps onto the snowy park grounds.

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As I walked among the pieces, several of them spoke to me: the fracturedness of Judith Shea’s “Without Words”, the pensive and mysterious “Walking Man” by George Segal, the playful “Empire” by Eva Rothschild, the eerie holiness of Theaster Gates’ “Black Vessel for a Saint”... Some of them spoke to different feelings I had inside me at the time; others depicted stories I felt I could relate to and wanted to watch unfold before my eyes. I found myself wanting to interact with so many of them - wanting to fit myself into their sculpted moments, entwine my stories and feelings between their crevices and curves. But with only a few hours left in the city, I couldn’t squeeze in the chance to link with a fellow artist to help me capture the visions I had. So I tucked the concept away in my mind and continued moseying through the winding pathways of the park.

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Back to Seattle, the sculpture garden’s marks on me remained. As I embarked on other projects, processing other emotions through other pieces, I also started scouting places I could take my Midwest vision and execute it in the Pacific Northwest. Sure, there's plenty sculptures and statues in the city of Seattle - but getting to and interacting with them the way I wanted to (see my recent mini-post on nudity as vulnerability and power) would prove to be a little difficult...

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A fellow artist mentioned the Olympic Sculpture Park and I thought back to what I remembered seeing there. It’d been a minute since I had last walked through so I visited it again and the pieces that I saw touched me differently from the last time I saw them. Then, I was new to the area - everything shined brightly, glowing with a promise of what was to come for me here: “Which pieces would be the ones that I would grow to understand - which ones would I grow to love seeing in the distance?” But walking through it in 2022, the sculptures spoke to me differently than they did the first time; and in turn, they also spoke to a different me...

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I was seeing the sculptures with more worn eyes. And as I mentally noted which sculptures I could see myself fitting into like I had in Minneapolis, I started to realize that the pieces were reflecting a deeper feeling back at me: The pieces on the Olympic park grounds that spoke to me before were no longer the fascinating landmarks welcoming me to my new home - the pieces that spoke to me were the monuments that emphasized the outsider feelings I had that were settling in.

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In a place I thought I’d fit into, that I thought I had....I was sticking out. The boxes I thought I’d fit into I was pouring out of. The doors I thought were wide open were really just windows ajar just wide enough for me to stick an arm’s length into. The language of the land I thought I knew and understood were now sounding strange. Though I’d been here for 4 years, I felt like a stranger who didn’t belong - an antigen the host was beginning to respond to and filter out, an intrusive thought in someone else’s dream.

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I slowly realized that this concept was bigger for me than just speaking to my original thought of art begetting art as I combined my feelings and stories with the ones depicted on the park grounds. The feelings I had looking over the park pieces stirred the idea to speak to and represent the way I felt about being here now, with this iconic Seattle landscape as the backdrop. “Hidden Figures” then became my next cathartic art exercise - a visual representation of the struggle I felt trying to find my place in the city’s spaces I thought were made for me, the dichotomy of how standing out can be a strength and a hinderance here, and the lonesomeness that can come with being a transplant in the city - baring and presenting all those feelings in the heart of the city itself.

#sculpture park #minneapolis sculpture garden #walker art center #olympic sculpture park #seattle artists #conceptual photography #conceptual art #black artists #black and white photography #seattle art #portrait photography #sculpture #creative process #art shit

[paulpingminho]

#Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge #Minneapolis #Minnesota #Loring Park #Minneapolis Sculpture Garden #city #blue and yellow

[clairity-org]

Matthew Monahan, Hephaestus, 2013, Bronze, stainless steel, 3/22/24 #minneapolissculpturegarden by Sharon Mollerus

#Hephaestus #Minneapolis Sculpture Garden #stainless steel #2013 #Bronze #Matthew Monahan #Minneapolis #MN #flickr

[chaddavisphotography]

Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

#Cherry #Minneapolis Sculpture Garden #Reflection #Walker #Walker Art Museum

[audvocadotoast]

Minneapolis Sculpture Garden (Minneapolis, MN)

#photography #cherry sculpture #minneapolis #twin cities #sculpture garden #mn #minnesota

[queerhawkeyes]

I went on a plane for the first time in over 20 years

#human crap sack tire fire #actually me #it's the Minneapolis museum of art #the walker sculpture garden and the basilica of st mary #*institute of art

[redshift-13]

Minneapolis, 2022

#minneapolis #out and about #art #sculpture #the garden of phallic ruins

[salantami]

Sculpture of a giant blue rooster by the German artist Katharina Fritsch, which was unveiled in London's Trafalgar Square on the Forth plinth in 2013 

The blue rooster is now in Minneapolis sculpture garden

[gloop-augustus]

Pierre Huyghe “After Dream” - on view in the Minneapolis Walker Art sculpture garden.

#good art #windchimes #windchime art #pierre huyghe #minneapolis #walker art center

[veganslivingofftheland]

Wednesday, April 10th, 2024

Sculpture Garden of Minneapolis, Minnesota

#sculpture art #sculptures #modern art #minnesota #minneapolis #my photgraphy #me

[pwlanier]

Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920), Tête, limestone.

Note: Of the twenty-six unique sculptures by Modigliani, sixteen can be found in public institutions, including The Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth; Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Lille Metropole Musée d'art moderne, d'art contemporain et d'art brut; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Tate Gallery, London; The Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge; The Princeton University Art Museum; The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. and The Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Courtesy Alain Truong

[paulpingminho]

#yellow #blue #Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge #infrastructure #Minneapolis Sculpture Garden #Minneapolis #Minnesota

[clairity-org]

Angela Two Stars, Okciyapi, 2021, 3/22/24 #minneapolissculpturegarden by Sharon Mollerus

#Okciyapi #2021 #Angela Two Stars #Minneapolis Sculpture Garden #Minneapolis #MN #flickr

[chaddavisphotography]

The Cherry at the Walker Art Center sculpture garden.

#Chery #Garden #Minneapolis #Sculpture #Spoonbridge #Walker Art Center

[audvocadotoast]

View above Minneapolis Sculpture Garden (Minneapolis, MN)

#photography #minneapolis #twin cities #mn #minnesota #sculpture garden #walker art center