Artist Claes Oldenburg, creator of Minneapolis' iconic 'Spoonbridge and Cherry' sculpture, dies

Pop artist Claes Oldenburg, co-creator of the iconic Twin Cities fountain sculpture "Spoonbridge and Cherry," died at his home in Manhattan on Monday.

Oldenburg had fallen and broken his hip a month ago and had been in poor health ever since. He was 93.

The Swedish-born American artist was raised in Chicago and moved to New York in 1956. The giant spoon and crimson red cherry of "Spoonbridge and Cherry" has been known as the literal "topper" of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden since its grand opening in 1988. Designed by Oldenburg and his wife, Coosje van Bruggen, the piece is simply a 1,200-pound stainless steel cherry atop a gigantic silver spoon; water spouts from the cherry's stem, sprinkling into a small, asymmetrical pond.

Art collector Frederick R. Weisman funded the work through a $500,000 donation. Oldenburg and van Bruggen received the commission in 1985 from former Walker Art Center director Martin Friedman; it was the first piece commissioned for the garden.

The pop art sculpture uses images from everyday life for inspiration. In Oldenburg's famous art declaration "I Am For," written in 1961, he explains that he believes in art that "is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum."

The idea for the spoon came from a visit to the General Mills corporate campus after he saw Betty Crocker spoons. Van Bruggen put the "cherry on top" as the sculpture's final touch.

Oldenburg has had three major exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, in 1975, 1992 and 2013. There are 300 Oldenburg works in the Walker's collection, and the art center also hosted his first U.S. solo exhibition.

The spoon isn't just a spoon; it also evokes the front of a Viking ship (which is also echoed in the ship at the Vikings stadium), ice skating and even a duck popping out of the water (as they often do at the sculpture).

Every 10-ish years, the cherry receives a new coat of paint. It traveled to New York in 2009, and then again in 2021. Its departures and subsequent returns draw crowds to the garden, as visitors watch a construction worker enter the cherry and fly through the air inside of it. The cherry most recently returned on a snowy day in February, and its reinstallation is reminiscent of the "Spoonbridge and Cherry" snowglobe, which was once available in the Walker gift shop.

"It's such a playful sculpture," Engberg said. "It's the kind of piece that works beautifully in the snow in the winter, and in the summer. It's something that people love to photograph and always have, even before social media and selfies."

Oldenburg is also known for developing "soft sculpture" out of vinyl, and for creating the classic 1960s art event, the "Happening," a situational work of art that often appears free-wieldingfree-wheeling, performative and theatrical.

His other most famous large sculptures are "Clothespin," a 45-foot-high steel clothespin in Philadelphia, installed in 1976, and a 100-foot-high lattice-work steel baseball bat, the "Batcolumn," in front of a federal building in Chicago.

Claes (pronounced "klahs") Oldenburg was born in 1929 in Stockholm, the son of a diplomat. His father served as Swedish consul general for many years. Oldenburg became a U.S. citizen in 1953, and studied at Yale and the Art Institute of Chicago. He worked for a time at Chicago's City News Bureau. He settled in New York, but also lived in France and California.