Walker Art Center

The Walker Art Center is one of the major contemporary art museums in the U.S., housing some of the most iconic and innovative visual, performing, and mixed media art in the world. The Center hosted the first major museum exhibits by Joseph Cornell, Frank Gehry, Julie Mehretu, and Maria Merz and has acquired work by O’Keeffe and Warhol. Exhibitions here push the boundaries and strive to engage the audience in unique ways.

I didn’t know it would be the last time we’d ever see each other. My grandmother, a young 74 years old, healthy as a clam having beat cancer the previous year, and I walked hand in hand as we approached the giant spoon. I had been here many times before, but somehow she hadn’t. We marveled at the cherry on top, spitting out a stream of water into the pond below. What does it mean, she wondered aloud. I laughed, the same question I had always had when visiting Oldenburg and Van Bruggen’s “Spoonbridge and Cherry.” We giggled like school girls as we wandered around the Walker Art Center’s magnificent sculpture garden, wondering aloud at what it all meant, my husband and grandfather close in tow. Inside the museum is more modern art, the kind that causes grandparents to wrinkle their noses and question whether it’s really art at all. It’s up to the younger generation to affirm that, yes, it really is. Two months later, her health would take a sudden turn for the worst. Four months later, she’d be gone. Luckily, the giant spoon with the fountain cherry will always be there.