The Sculpture Garden Is Open, Free, and Made for a Summer Stroll

An open-air gallery on the edge of Lowry Hill

The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, the 11-acre green space beside the Walker Art Center, is open and free, as it is every day of the year. More than 40 works are arranged across the grounds, anchored by the city's most photographed sculpture, the Spoonbridge and Cherry, the towering spoon-and-fruit fountain by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen that has stood at the garden's heart since it opened in 1988.

For neighbors on Lowry Hill, the garden is less a destination than a backyard: close enough to fold into an after-dinner walk, and free enough that there is no reason not to. It sits on the neighborhood's downtown edge, a short stroll from the historic blocks, and it draws a steady summer mix of families, joggers, tourists with cameras and locals taking the long way home.

What you are actually looking at

The Spoonbridge and Cherry, conceived between 1985 and 1988 and funded by a $500,000 gift from collector Frederick R. Weisman, was the first work the Walker commissioned for the garden and remains its signature. But the grounds reward wandering past it: Katharina Fritsch's vivid blue rooster, Hahn/Cock, and dozens of other pieces from the Walker's collection are scattered among lawns and hedged 'rooms' designed to echo the museum's geometry.

The garden is run as a partnership between the Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, one of the largest urban sculpture parks in the country, which is part of why it stays free: it is treated as public park as much as museum annex.

Most cities keep their best art behind a ticket booth. Minneapolis put a 50-foot spoon in a public park and left the gate open.— LowryHillNews

Summer at a stroll's pace

The garden rewards an unhurried visit. Paths loop among the sculptures and lawns, benches invite a pause, and the open space tends to run a few degrees cooler than the surrounding streets on a hot afternoon. Because admission is free and the gates stay open through the long summer evenings, it is as suited to a ten-minute detour as to an afternoon.

Pairing a garden walk with the Walker's galleries or a free Music in the Parks night nearby makes for an easy car-free outing, the kind of low-cost summer plan the lake neighborhoods are unusually well placed to enjoy.