How does Spoonbridge and Cherry elucidate its History?
In the mid-1980s, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, commissioned a piece of work from married couple Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, whose first artistic collaboration had come in 1976. The work, which had its $500,000 budget donated by art collector Frederick R. Weisman, was to be placed in the new outdoor Minneapolis Sculpture Garden across Vineland Place from the Walker on land owned by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board.An early concept for the sculpture was a Viking ship with a dragon figurehead set in a circular reflecting pool; a 1986 article in the Star Tribune describes this vision as having been "quickly abandoned". The iconography of the spoon had been present in Oldenburg's work for a number of years since he acquired a piece of kitsch depicting a spoon atop a mass of chocolate in 1962. The cherry was contributed by van Bruggen, who found inspiration in the formality of the sculpture garden's design, in the Palace of Versailles, and in the dining etiquette of Louis XIV's court. Walker curator Siri Engberg said in 2013 that the bowl of the spoon was associated with "the prow of a Viking ship, a duck rising out of the water, various flora and fauna, [and] ice skating" for Oldenburg and van Bruggen. Martin Friedman, director of the Walker, said of the work that the artists did not intend to craft a "sculptural symbol of Minneapolis" but that he believed Spoonbridge and Cherry would "be a landmark and [would] give a lot of people pleasure".The piece was fabricated between 1987 and 1988 at two shipyards, one in Boothbay, Maine, and the other in Bristol, Rhode Island, and finished in New Haven, Connecticut, at sculpture fabricator Lippincott, Inc. It was placed in the northern portion of the Sculpture Garden by two cranes on May 9, 1988. The Sculpture Garden held opening ceremonies September 9–11 of that year, with an official dedication on September 10 featuring a band of spoon players.Spoonbridge and Cherry was entirely repainted in 1995. In 2012, the word "Kony" was spray painted onto the sculpture's spoon, possibly as part of Invisible Children's Cover the Night campaign, requiring the sculpture to be scrubbed and repaired, which Walker staff were able to complete within 48 hours. In 2021, the cherry of the Spoonbridge and Cherry was sent to New York to be entirely repainted again. It was returned to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in 2022.
Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board figurehead Star Tribune Bristol, Rhode Island kitsch New Haven, Connecticut Palace of Versailles shipyard Louis XIV Viking ship Minneapolis Claes Oldenburg spoon players Frederick R. Weisman spray paint Coosje van Bruggen Walker Art Center Invisible Children Boothbay, Maine Minneapolis Sculpture Garden Cover the Night