The Walker Art Center and the Spoonbridge That Started It

The Walker Art Center and the Spoonbridge That Started It

The Walker Art Center sits at 725 Vineland Place on a hill above Loring Park, and it has been quietly making the case since 1879 that a city famous for cold winters and polite manners can also be one of the most important contemporary art destinations in the country. The building — a geometric stack of aluminum and glass designed by Herzog & de Meuron — looks like it's making an argument about space that you'll need to go inside to fully understand.

The permanent collection is deep and opinionated: Warhol, Kara Walker, Jasper Johns, and a rotating selection that always includes at least one thing that will make you stop walking and reconsider your relationship with the object in front of you. The Walker doesn't do safe. The galleries are designed to create encounters rather than displays, and the curatorial voice is strong enough to feel like a conversation rather than a lecture.

The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden adjacent to the Walker is the real public square — eleven acres of outdoor art anchored by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's Spoonbridge and Cherry, a 50-foot spoon holding a cherry that has become Minneapolis's most photographed landmark and its most beloved piece of public absurdity. The sculpture garden works because it mixes monumental pieces with intimate ones, and walking through it feels less like visiting a museum and more like taking a stroll through a neighborhood where the residents happen to be made of steel and stone.

What visitors miss: The Walker's cinema program. The theater screens films that you will not find at the multiplex — international, experimental, restored classics — and the seats are better than any art-house theater you've been to. Check the schedule on the website and plan a double feature with the galleries. It's how Minneapolis spends its dark winter evenings, and it's a better answer to the cold than complaining.