The Garden's Quieter Icons Reward a Second Look

Installed in 2017 as Gates's first permanent outdoor commission, the piece is a 20-foot cylinder of coal-black bricks the artist made himself, modeled on a Roman tempietto and set on a raised platform reached by two ramps. Inside, behind steel doors, stands a salvaged statue of St. Laurence, patron saint of librarians and archivists, rescued from the demolished Church of St. Laurence in Gates's Chicago neighborhood. Gates conceived it as a quiet, sacred space to mark the garden's 2017 reopening.

It is a different experience than the spoon. "Spoonbridge and Cherry," the Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen work completed in 1988, measures 52 feet long and has become an unofficial symbol of Minneapolis. It reads from across the lawn; the Gates vessel asks you to walk up to it.

The garden, a joint project of the Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, reopened in June 2017 after a reconstruction and now holds dozens of works across its 11 acres, including pieces by Alexander Calder and Angela Two Stars. It is free, with no ticket or time slot, open daily from 6 a.m. to midnight. That openness is what makes the quieter works worth a second look: the next time the spoon is mobbed, keep walking.