Why Everyone's Wedding Photos End Up at the Spoon

Spend a Saturday in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and you will lose count of the wedding parties. The 11-acre park at the base of Lowry Hill has become the region's default backdrop for the most photographed days of people's lives: weddings, engagements, proms and graduations.

The draw is obvious once you stand there. The garden is free, open 365 days a year, and anchored by an instantly recognizable sculpture, the Spoonbridge and Cherry fountain designed by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, often framed against the downtown skyline. A photo at the spoon reads as both celebratory and unmistakably local in a single frame. A comparable private garden or estate would charge a fee and require a booking; the Sculpture Garden asks for neither.

There is something fitting about a contemporary art park doubling as a stage for private milestones. The garden sits north of the Walker Art Center and is operated jointly by the Walker and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. The art was meant to belong to the public, and every bridal party that poses there is the public taking it at its word.

For neighbors, the parade of prom groups and bridal parties is part of the garden's summer texture, occasionally an obstacle when a photographer has claimed the best angle on the spoon, but mostly a sign the place is doing what it was built to do. And the crowds are easy enough to dodge: the same garden that fills on a summer Saturday is nearly empty on a weekday morning or a winter afternoon, the privilege of living beside a backdrop the rest of the region has to plan a trip to use.