FROM THE HOME FRONT
Jon Spayde
A locally based legend was honored, a lauded photographer put up one of his most ambitious projects, a controversial civic sculpture program unveiled its second work, and a fiberglass beaver came under attack— all in all, it was a lively summer for public art in Minnesota.
PUBLIC ART REVIEW | VOL. 22 NO. 1 • ISSUE 43
The legend is Siah Armajani, the architecturally inflected sculptor best known in the Twin Cities for the poetic paintedsteel Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge [pictured above] that links the Walker Art Center and Loring Park. The McKnight Foundation gave the Tehran-born Armajani its Distinguished Artist Award, carrying a $50,000 honorarium, lauding him as an artist “who has made a worldwide career of connections.” Another notable connecter among Minnesota artists is Wing Young Huie, whose powerful photographs of inner-city people bridge many a gap in culture and income. He installed his University Avenue Project—hundreds of photographs of neighborhood folks of all races, many holding chalkboards inscribed with personal secrets, dreams, and statements of faith—in storefronts along University, the multicultural avenue that links Minneapolis and St. Paul [read more on page 63].
Steel and Glass, Water and Grass In its literal-minded way, University Avenue runs directly into the University of Minnesota, whose already stellar public art collection was beefed up further by two notable pieces. Craig David, whose ingeniously wry, gently surreal mosaic murals enliven one of the walls of the Twins’ new ballpark downtown, completed The Ribs of Humanity, a gathering of semi-abstract red granite figures near a massive granite flame, for the plaza in front of the U’s undergrad business school. And Belarus-born, St. Paul-based Alexander Tylevich adorned the new Science Teaching and Student Services building, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, on the east bank of the Mississippi with a gigantic spiral ribbon of suspended glass. When the city of Minneapolis broached plans to commission 10 sculptural drinking fountains to promote the city’s
ABOVE: Photo courtesy Walker Art Center.
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