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Minneapolis, Minnesota
With the sidewalk and the pigeons and my window reflection
Without warning and without any good reason, I have recently returned from Minneapolis (yes, Minneapolis) with pictures and stories neatly packaged into a familiar slideshow format, part of a continuing effort to make me look more traveled than I really am.
We’re starting at the Walker Art Center, a great contemporary museum, firmly entrenched somewhere in the top five of my all time favorites with the Whitney, Pompidou, Tate and, I don't know, let's say the Hirshhorn. The original museum building was designed by Edward Larabee Barnes, the guy who also designed the familiar IBM Building on 57th Street (you know, the one with all that bamboo behind Trump Tower). From memory the old building was not that bad, just small and a bit dated. All of that changed a month ago when the Walker opened their much deserved monster addition, designed by Herzog and de Meuron. The main thrust of the new building hangs out over Hennepin Avenue, a giant, slightly warped cube wrapped in a sea of metal mesh panels. Inside the new and old buildings things stay interesting with a series of nice galleries and memorable small touches- all done with no great atrium, no fish gallery, no continuous ramp, no obvious crutch.
Everyone loves Herzog and de Meuron (ok, maybe not everyone- Will Alsop once famously called them Hedgehog and the Moron).
Still H & (d)M have been getting a lot of work outside Basel since their terribly popular Tate Modern opened five years ago. This year they are opening the de Young Museum in San Francisco and a football stadium in Munich (where I have World Cup tickets next year), and by 2008 they will (probably) be opening the Beijing Olympic Stadium- a memorably giant, fun birdnest that the Chinese are hoping will distract the world from all those always nagging human rights issues.
The Walker Art Center is part of a larger cultural complex. Next door is the about to be demolished Guthrie Theatre, while across the street is the legendary Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. At its center is the best icon any American city has to offer, Claes Oldenburg's Spoon Bridge and Cherry, a well named sculpture that has continued to entertain people who still manage to wonder what it all exactly means.
Back in 1986 the Walker Art Center held an exhibit on Frank Gehry, an otherwise fairly under publicized California architect who had completed a lot of work in Santa Monica and had a house with chain link fencing on it. Gehry left the sculpture garden with a reminder, a glass fish sculpture done before Bilbao, before the Disney Hall, before all of those shiny metallic curves became so expected.
Finally after all those art photos here is an actual picture of Minneapolis, home to a some big shiny buildings and decent (though quiet) downtown connected by all the pedestrian walkways you could possibly expect in such a cold climate.
