Mother's Day Weekend Brings the Art Fair Back to the Sculpture Garden

The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden Art Fair returns for Mother's Day weekend, May 9 and 10, 2026, setting up its booths among the more than sixty sculptures the Walker Art Center keeps on the eleven-acre grounds. The fair is free to walk through, and the garden's signature Spoonbridge and Cherry anchors the whole scene.

It is the fair's third year in the garden, run by Homespun Events, and the pairing is the point. A working art market dropped into a permanent sculpture collection gives the weekend a doubled appeal: visitors can buy a piece to take home and, a few steps away, stand in front of monumental works that are not for sale at all.

A backyard for Lowry Hill

For Lowry Hill residents, the Sculpture Garden is essentially a backyard. The fair sits a short walk from Kenwood and a quick ride from Lake of the Isles, and the timing — a warm-enough spring weekend after a long Minnesota winter — tends to pull families out in force.

The garden itself is one of the largest urban sculpture gardens in the country, free and open year-round, operated by the Walker in coordination with the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. The Spoonbridge and Cherry, by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, has anchored it since the late 1980s and remains the most photographed object in the city.

What to expect

Expect a juried mix of painters, printmakers, jewelers, ceramicists and photographers, with the kind of original, handmade work that rewards a slow walk. Because the fair shares the lawns with the permanent collection, the browsing and the looking blur together — you drift from an artist's booth to a Calder or an Oldenburg without changing gears.

Organizers schedule the fair to overlap with Mother's Day brunch traffic, so the surrounding cafes and the garden's lawns tend to stay busy from opening through mid-afternoon both days. It makes an easy anchor for a family morning: art, a walk, and a meal nearby.

Why it works as a neighborhood event

A free art fair in a free public garden is about as low-barrier as an outing gets. There is no ticket, no required spend, and an off-ramp the moment anyone is done. That is exactly what makes it a fixture: it asks nothing of the families who fold it into a Sunday and still delivers a full morning out.

It also makes good use of a civic asset the neighborhood sometimes takes for granted. The garden is busiest on weekends like this, and a packed lawn is the best argument there is for keeping a place like it free and open.