Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Minneapolis, Minnesota

The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is set on 7.5 acres of downtown Minneapolis park land adjacent to the noted Walker Art Center. The sculpture garden was developed jointly by the Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Park Board. Quennell Rothschild & Partners worked in close collaboration with eight artists on site‑specific works, as well as with the museum director, its architect Edward Larabee Barnes, and the Park Board to create a flexible plan for the garden which would serve both museum visitors and general park users. Reviewing the project, Progressive Architecture wrote: “The garden, which combines public‑sector accessibility with a private‑sector intensity of vision, is a work of public art that is indeed a work of art.”

The garden is designed as a series of roofless outdoor galleries for exhibiting works of art from the museum’s collections. It consists of four 100-foot square plazas enclosed with low stone walls and clipped evergreen hedges, and a large grassy courtyard featuring a free‑form pond and a dramatic sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. QRP worked closely with the artists to plant and shape the pond in the form of a winged maple seed. Because the park site had once included a lake, severe settlement problems were anticipated, and a special subsurface structural system was developed to address this problem. A pedestrian bridge spanning route I‑94, designed in collaboration with artist Siah Armajani and funded by the Federal Highway Administration, was also added.

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  • © Walker Art Center