The Twin City Tourists
Returning from France, we’re again spending time in the Minneapolis area, more commonly referred to as "The Twin Cities," or by locals as "The Cities." This time we decided to act as tourists and take in some of the museums and art galleries that are so prevalent here. The current exhibit at the Walker Art Center, in downtown Minneapolis, is Picasso and American Artists. A wonderful collection of Picasso’s paintings and sculptures were exhibited side by side with American Artists of that era and later, to show the influence artists have on each other. I was fascinated to learn that Picasso never set foot in the U.S. but many American artists traveled to Europe to see his paintings and later many of those paintings made their way into American collections. We had a very nice lunch at one of the two Wolfgang Puck restaurants, before continuing on.
All of the art is not inside this gallery. The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, is one of the largest urban sculpture gardens in the U.S. It shares it’s 11 acres with the Cowles conservatory where we particularly liked seeing the Standing Glass Fish created by artist/architect, Frank Gehry. The story goes that when Frank was a child, his grandmother bought live carp on Thursdays to make into gefilte fish on Fridays. She’d let the fish swim in the bathtub overnight, where Gehry would play with them. This memory inspired him to create this 22-foot high construction of glass, wood and steel that rises out of a lily pond among the palms at the conservatory. The most striking sculpture there is the fountain-sculpture, Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. It weighs more than 7,000 pounds and is 52 feet long (the cherry alone is 1200 pounds). The handle of the spoon is a bridge and water sprays out of the cherry stem.
We were also in town for the Third Thursday event at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. It was billed as a Scandinavian Art Smorgasbord and featured "A Mirror of Nature" which was a celebration of Nordic roots - Nordic landscape paintings from 1840-1910. There were so many magnificent masterworks from Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland. We were amazed at the many perspectives of natured that were captured by these great artists of that era. We stopped for a cocktail in the reception hall and enjoyed some Nordic music. We stayed until they closed at 9pm, then went to a favorite German restaurant, The Black Forest, for an authentic German meal. We almost felt we had spent an evening in Europe.
Mixed in with playing tourists, we’ve again enjoyed spending time with the grandchildren. More hockey and baseball games, plus swimming in the pool and going to play miniature golf. Tomorrow we’ll pick up Daniel (13) and Carly (10) and head back up to the cabin for a week.
Returning from France, we’re again spending time in the Minneapolis area, more commonly referred to as "The Twin Cities," or by locals as "The Cities." This time we decided to act as tourists and take in some of the museums and art galleries that are so prevalent here. The current exhibit at the Walker Art Center, in downtown Minneapolis, is Picasso and American Artists. A wonderful collection of Picasso’s paintings and sculptures were exhibited side by side with American Artists of that era and later, to show the influence artists have on each other. I was fascinated to learn that Picasso never set foot in the U.S. but many American artists traveled to Europe to see his paintings and later many of those paintings made their way into American collections. We had a very nice lunch at one of the two Wolfgang Puck restaurants, before continuing on.
All of the art is not inside this gallery. The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, is one of the largest urban sculpture gardens in the U.S. It shares it’s 11 acres with the Cowles conservatory where we particularly liked seeing the Standing Glass Fish created by artist/architect, Frank Gehry. The story goes that when Frank was a child, his grandmother bought live carp on Thursdays to make into gefilte fish on Fridays. She’d let the fish swim in the bathtub overnight, where Gehry would play with them. This memory inspired him to create this 22-foot high construction of glass, wood and steel that rises out of a lily pond among the palms at the conservatory. The most striking sculpture there is the fountain-sculpture, Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. It weighs more than 7,000 pounds and is 52 feet long (the cherry alone is 1200 pounds). The handle of the spoon is a bridge and water sprays out of the cherry stem.
We were also in town for the Third Thursday event at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. It was billed as a Scandinavian Art Smorgasbord and featured "A Mirror of Nature" which was a celebration of Nordic roots - Nordic landscape paintings from 1840-1910. There were so many magnificent masterworks from Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland. We were amazed at the many perspectives of natured that were captured by these great artists of that era. We stopped for a cocktail in the reception hall and enjoyed some Nordic music. We stayed until they closed at 9pm, then went to a favorite German restaurant, The Black Forest, for an authentic German meal. We almost felt we had spent an evening in Europe.
Mixed in with playing tourists, we’ve again enjoyed spending time with the grandchildren. More hockey and baseball games, plus swimming in the pool and going to play miniature golf. Tomorrow we’ll pick up Daniel (13) and Carly (10) and head back up to the cabin for a week.
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