Visual Arts

Lowering the cherry into place, Walker Art Center, 1988

On the morning of February 23, the cherry from Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s sculpture Spoonbridge and Cherry will be removed for restoration, by the Walker Art Center.  The beloved sculpture, part of the Walker’s permanent collection since 1988, when it was installed, is truly an iconic centerpiece of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

The process will begin with Walker Art Center Sculpture Garden Technician, Noah Wilson, being hoisted to the base of the cherry, where he will remove an access plate.  After climbing into the cherry, Wilson will prepare to remove the 8 bolts that secure the cherry to the spoon.  In the meantime, a 110 ton crane will position its boom over the stem of the cherry.  A single nylon strap will be secured to the stem, supporting the 2-ton stainless-steel ball and Noah, as he removes the bolts.  Gently, the crane operator will move the cherry away from the spoon, over the pond, to the frozen lawn, where Noah will exit through the access panel.

The cherry will then be placed onto the back of a double-drop flatbed trailer into a custom fabricated nest of plywood, foam, and moving pads.  The nylon strap, extending from the crane, will be repositioned and the cherry slowly rotated so that the tip of the stem makes contact with the padded surface of the trailers front end.  The work will be completely blanketed with padded material, strapped in place and covered with a tarp for transport to an industrial coating facility.

Cut-outs measuring the exact circumference of the cherry will be fabricated to ensure that the finished size of the restored cherry will not differ from the original.  Next, 11 existing coats of paint will be removed from its surface, as well as a thick layer of underlying fairing compound (auto-body putty).  The fairing compound used to create the precise spherical form of the cherry, has, after 21 years of Minnesota weather and a constant stream of water covering its surface during the warm months, reached the end of its useful life and is beginning to show signs of failure.  Upon close inspection of the surface of the cherry, a network of hairline cracks are present, and if left untreated, will continue to widen and lift away from the surface of the cherry.

Crane lowering the cherry, Walker Art Center, 1988

After reaching bare metal, the surface of the cherry will be sprayed with a yellow oxide epoxy primer, followed by a coat of gray epoxy primer.  Layers of a green immersion-grade fairing compound, the same product used to shape the hulls of ocean vessels, will be spread over the surface, allowed to dry, and be hand-sanded, building the cherry back to the appropriate circumference and re-creating is perfect spherical profile. 

Once the surface is pristine, another layer of gray epoxy will be sprayed on the work, before two coats of marine-grade “cherry red” polyurethane.  The top layer will be a clear-coat, which will provide a layer of protection from the paint-fading ultra-violet rays of the sun.  

Once the paint layers are fully cured, the work will be carefully packed and transported back to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden to be reunited with the spoon.  I expect the process to be complete in early April.  Be sure to watch for status updates and progress reports.

Kinji Akagawa with a scale model of Garden Seating, Reading, Thinking

Photo: Cameron Wittig

Sculptor Kinji Akagawa’s relationship with the Walker goes almost to his first days in Minneapolis more than three decades ago. Commissioned to create a work to inaugurate the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in 1988, he also worked to transform the art lab into a Japanese studio for the exhibition Tokyo Form and Spirit in 1986. Currently, he is designing a Peace Bridge with artist Jerry Allan to be installed at Minneapolis’ Peace Garden at Lake Harriet. In the April issue of Walker, we ran a brief interview with him on our membership page; his ideas about getting lost and the “meandering walk” of art are worth repeating here.

Your contribution to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, called Garden Seating, Reading, Thinking (1987), is a bench, but it’s more than that. How did it come to be?

When I got the commission, I said, “ If the bench is just for physical rest, you can buy one through a catalogue. Catalogue number five, OK, order the bench.” Martin [Friedman, former Walker director] was kind enough to say: “ Well, give me something else.” So I made the piece, but not just as a bench for physical rest. Intellectually, you have to rest within that kind of context; emotionally, you have to rest looking at all the sculpture. I included a reading lectern and used familiar, Midwestern materials: fieldstone and basalt from St. Croix. The bench provides psychological rest, intellectual rest, and physical rest.

You’ve said that the Garden extends the idea of art into the social and natural realms. Do you think the new Walker’s architecture expands on those ideas?

My idea of gardens from my Japanese background is the importance of a meandering, aimless walk. There are surprises, with rocks and water and sky and reflections and shadows. The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is very formal in the European aesthetic sense; maybe the idea of garden has to expand a little bit more. Besides the formality, trees are growing, and 10 years later, it’s another experience. The new Walker has elements of this meandering and surprises. We experience narrowness, openness, height, and all these physical sensations.

With those winding hallways, it’s easy to get lost–which is a bit like your meandering walk.

Giving us the opportunity to get lost is, I think, part of the museum’s job. You have to get lost. When you’re lost, you really pay attention to look again. The sense of being lost physically is to reexamine one’s own position, and no longer just assume a relationship to one’s surroundings or the architecture. That’s a very important part of life.

You have a work in the Garden, and you’re an art professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. You’re already kind of an art insider. Why does a guy like you need a Walker membership?

[Laughs] We all are interdependent. Because of the Walker, a lot of my students, my generation, my culture have been supported. That’s a wonderful thing. It’s not membership as in “I’m a member” or in terms of belonging, nor is it about financial contributions. It’s being supported and being supporting. That’s just community.

Garden Seating, Reading, Thinking Kinji Akagawa 1987 granite, basalt, cedar