The park Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is an 11 acre (45,000 m²) park in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the United States. It is located near the Walker Art Center, which operates it in coordination with the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. It is one of the largest urban sculpture gardens in the country, with 40 permanent art installations and several other temporary pieces that are moved in and out periodically.
The park is also in proximity to Loring Park and the Basilica of Saint Mary. It was once connected to Loring Park, but the construction of Interstate 94 in the 1960s split the area into two parts.
The land was first purchased by the park board around the start of the 20th century, when it was known as "The Parade" because it had been used for military drills. It became known as the Armory Gardens after park superintendent Theodore Wirth created a formal design that included a U.S. National Guard armory (Kenwood Armory) for Spanish War Volunteers. Working as a civic and cultural center, in 1913 a floral convention transformed the land into floral gardens, which it remained for the next 50 years. In 1929, a year after the Walker Art Gallery opened across the street, the Armory was blasted for its instability, and a new Armory built in downtown Minneapolis, turning the Armory Gardens over to the Minneapolis Park Board. After the highway was put in, separating Loring Park from the Gardens, much of the land was used for sports playing fields. In 1988, the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden opened, designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes and landscape architects Quinnel and Rothschild. In 1992, the Garden was expanded, adding 3½ acres. Michael Van Valkenburgh and Associates, Inc. designed the northward extension to complement the original space with a more open area that features a walkway and the 300-foot-long Alene Grossman Memorial Arbor.
The centerpiece of the garden is the Spoonbridge and Cherry (1985–1988) water sculpture designed by husband and wife Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. The grounds also include the Cowles Conservatory, which has more flora and sculpture inside, such as Frank Gehry's Standing Glass Fish. A pedestrian bridge, the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge (1987), designed by Siah Armajani now crosses I-94, once again connecting the sculpture garden to Loring Park.
The Spoonbridge and Cherry sculpture suffered a vandalism attack on April, 2012 in response to the Kony 2012 movement.
Famous quotes containing the words sculpture and/or garden:
“You should go to picture-galleries and museums of sculpture to be acted upon, and not to express or try to form your own perfectly futile opinion. It makes no difference to you or the world what you may think of any work of art. That is not the question; the point is how it affects you. The picture is the judge of your capacity, not you of its excellence; the world has long ago passed its judgment upon it, and now it is for the work to estimate you.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
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—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)