The Walker Art Center’s sculpture park turns over a new leaf
Following a $10 million expansion and the removal of one controversial work of art, an iconic sculpture park in Minneapolis reopens to the community.
Much has been said about Los Angeles artist Sam Durant's large-scale sculpture Scaffold, which collages the architecture of seven hangings carried out by the US government, ranging from the gallows of abolitionist John Brown to Saddam Hussein and the 38 Dakota Sioux whom President Lincoln ordered to be hung in 1962 in Mankato, Minnesota. Debuted at Documenta in Kassel in 2012, Scaffold was read as a condemnation of state-sanctioned execution. But five years later, in the Walker Art Center’s newly expanded Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, it was a barbed reminder of a deep and brutal trauma.
Referring to another work in the park, Katharina Fritsch’s brilliant-blue rooster and its move from Trafalgar Square to American poultry country, Walker Art Center executive director Olga Viso said, ‘When you change the context of the work in the local community it brings these interesting local associations.’ Only days later, Dakota elders associating Durant’s piece with genocide called for its incineration near Fort Snelling, the site where the executed had been interred.
Viso and Durant were quick to apologise and comply, handing the full intellectual property rights to Scaffold over to the tribe. The museum delayed the scheduled 3 June completion of the sculpture park’s $10m year-long renovation, so that it could be dismantled and removed.
Hahn/Cock, by Katharina Fritsch, 2010-13, Minneapolis
‘I take full responsibility for the missteps that have been made here,’ Viso told the StarTribune, describing these events as a ‘very painful’ public lesson. The controversy surrounding the piece unravels the very vision behind the sculpture park's renovation, one of greater inclusivity, social awareness, and public engagement through design.
When the park first opened in 1988, the garden subscribed to a 20th-century idea of stewarding art within a fortress, closing itself off in protective rows of pines and bermed walls. The expansion was carried out for the past year by an extensive team that included landscape architects Tom Oslund and Petra Blaisse, and architect Julie Snow, who took the walls down, as well as adding more points of entry, and five new acres.
Scaffold was one of 18 new pieces that brought the garden’s artworks into the 21st century, the first curatorial update since its inception. Works like Theaster Gates’ Black Vessel for a Saint and Nairy Baghramian’s Privileged Points breathe new diversity and critical viewpoints into the public space, while Fritsch’s absurd and commanding Hahn/Cock stands up is to Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s 1985 Spoonbridge and Cherry, the longtime centrepiece of the garden. Raising environmental sustainability and lowering its footprint, the Walker also installed a greywater system to feed the fountain below the iconic sculpture and transformed the garden’s conservatory into an open-air pavilion, removing the need to keep its interior at 75 degrees year-round.
As of now, the pieces of Durant’s sculpture are being stored by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board as the Dakota elders reconsider their initial plans to burn it. The garden held its ribbon-cutting ceremony on 10 June, with a freshly repainted cherry and a new path that leads visitors past a James Turrell Skyspace up to the top of Wurtele Upper Garden, newly contoured by Dutch landscape architect Blaisse and providing an impeccable vista. It’s emblematic of a museum that, despite its stumbles, recognises the importance of new points of view.
INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Walker Art Center website
ADDRESS
Walker Art Center
725 Vineyard Place
Minneapolis, MN 55403
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
-
The Lake House is a tree-inspired retreat making the most of Berlin’s nature
The Lake House by Sigurd Larsen is a nature-inspired retreat in west Berlin, surrounded by trees and drawing on their timber nature
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
The McLaren W1 is the latest in the sports car maker's tech-saturated Ultimate Series
First F1, then P1 and now W1, McLaren Automotive reveals its latest limited-edition supercar to the world, a £2m concoction of hybrid power and active aero that is, unsurprisingly, already sold out
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Paul Rudolph at The Met: ‘from Christmas lights to megastructures’
‘Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolph’ opens at the Met in New York, exploring the modernist master's work through a feast of an exhibition
By Stephanie Murg Published
-
‘Gas Tank City’, a new monograph by Andrew Holmes, is a photorealist eye on the American West
‘Gas Tank City’ chronicles the artist’s journey across truck-stop America, creating meticulous drawings of fleeting moments
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Intimacy, violence and the uncanny: Joanna Piotrowska in Philadelphia
Artist and photographer Joanna Piotrowska stages surreal scenes at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania
By Hannah Silver Published
-
First look: Sphere’s new exterior artwork draws on a need for human connection
Wallpaper* talks to Tom Hingston about his latest large-scale project – designing for the Exosphere
By Charlotte Gunn Published
-
Marc Hom reframes traditional portraiture in Cooperstown, NY
‘Marc Hom: Re-Framed’ has taken over the grounds of the Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, planting Samuel L Jackson, Gwyneth Paltrow and more ‘personalities of the world’ into the landscape
By Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou Published
-
Alexander May, founder of LA studio Sized, on the joys of creative polymathy
Creative director Alexander May tells us of the multidisciplinary approach that drives his LA studio Sized and its offspring, a 5,000 sq ft event space and an exhibition series
By Hannah Silver Published
-
50 of America’s top creatives, photographed by Inez & Vinoodh
Photographed exclusively for Wallpaper* by Inez & Vinoodh, we present a portfolio of 50 creatives driving the current discourse on American culture and its dynamic evolution
By Dan Howarth Published
-
Nona Faustine confronts the past in New York
Artist Nona Faustine reframes New York's colonial past in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Harlem-born artist Tschabalala Self’s colourful ode to the landscape of her childhood
Tschabalala Self’s new show at Finland's Espoo Museum of Modern Art evokes memories of her upbringing, in vibrant multi-dimensional vignettes
By Millen Brown-Ewens Published