The professionals have already made their pick. A blind jury of local dignitaries and art enthusiasts looked at all 80 sculptures installed across downtown this spring and settled on Alicia Jones's kinetic piece, Exquisite Trio, as the 2026 Best of Show winner. It sits outside Marie & Marie Bridal at 229 S. Phillips Ave, and it will stay there through next spring before the city's Visual Arts Commission gives it a permanent home somewhere in the community.
That part of the story is finished. The other part is not, and it belongs to whoever bothers to show up.
Every year from May through September, the public gets its own vote, separate from the jury's, for the SculptureWalk People's Choice Award. Whichever piece wins gets purchased by the City of Sioux Falls and folded into its permanent public art collection, right alongside whatever the professionals chose. Two sculptures, two very different selection processes, both ending in the same outcome: a piece of art that stays in Sioux Falls for good. One of those decisions already happened. The other one closes September 30, which means anyone reading this on a weekday in late September has nine days left to have a say in what their own downtown looks like a year from now.
Most people walking Phillips Avenue right now don't know that clock is running. The sculptures have been up since May. They've become scenery, the kind of thing you register out of the corner of your eye on the way to lunch rather than something you're actively choosing between. That's the gap worth closing before the ballot boxes come down.
What the Jury Already Settled
This year's exhibit marks SculptureWalk's 23rd year, and the 2026 lineup carries a detail that hadn't happened before: its youngest contributing artist ever, a 21-year-old Northern State University art student named Daria Poor, showing alongside roughly 60 artists from 20 states. That mix of a first-time student sculptor next to established names is part of what the blind jury was weighing when it landed on Exquisite Trio for Best of Show.
The piece's next chapter is already mapped out. It stays at its current spot near the bridal shop through spring 2027, and then the Visual Arts Commission works with the city to place it permanently somewhere in the community. That's a juried outcome. Nobody's vote changes it now.
What's Still Yours to Decide
The People's Choice Award works on a completely different mechanism, and it's the one still in motion. Voting has been open since May, runs through September 30, and can be done two ways.
- Online at SculptureWalkSiouxFalls.com/vote, where you pick your favorite from the full lineup and submit a short contact form.
- In person, using one of the ballot boxes stationed along Phillips Avenue, where you can pick up a paper ballot and drop it back in.
Whichever sculpture wins gets purchased by the city and added to the same permanent collection that already includes pieces like the Arc of Dreams, the stainless steel span over the Big Sioux River that's become the exhibit's anchor landmark. In other words, the difference between a sculpture that goes back to its artist in the spring and one that stays in Sioux Falls forever, in some cases, comes down to whoever filled out a ballot before the end of the month.
The Same Walk Now Has New Stops
Here's the part that makes this year worth an actual visit rather than a digital vote from your couch. The physical SculptureWalk route runs from the Washington Pavilion, down Phillips Avenue, over to the East Bank along 8th Street, under the Arc of Dreams, and back. That's the same corridor that's absorbed two notable restaurant changes in 2026, both close enough to the route that you'd pass within a block or two of either one anyway.
Fernson Brewing's newest concept, Totally Rad Pizza, opened this past June inside the historic Harvester Building at 196 E. Sixth St, a short walk from the Levitt at the Falls stage and easily worked into the East Bank leg of the walk. It replaced Harvester Kitchen by Bryan and Nunzio's Food Hall in that space, and it's a bigger build than a simple pizza counter. The main floor runs full service with roughly 85 seats, a 2,000-square-foot patio is opening in phases, and a 3,000-square-foot lower level is being finished out with a basement-bar feel, pinball machines, and dart boards. The pizza itself runs through a high-temperature Swedish deck oven, with a hand-tossed New York style crust, a cracker-thin Midwest tavern style, and a rice-flour gluten-friendly option, using ingredients like Bianco DiNapoli tomatoes and Ezzo pepperoni that the Fernson team sourced specifically for this menu.
At the other end of downtown, near Falls Park, the restaurant formerly known as Big Sioux Burger inside the Steel District has rebranded as Big Sioux Diner & Dive. The burger menu that built its following is still there, but the rebrand added expanded lunch and dinner options, turning what used to be a single-purpose burger stop into something you could reasonably plan a full meal around before or after the walk.
Neither of these existed on the SculptureWalk route two years ago. Both do now, and both sit close enough to the path that a resident voting in person doesn't need to detour to eat well while doing it.
Why Nine Days Matters More Than It Sounds
It's easy to treat a public art vote as low-stakes, the kind of civic participation that feels optional because the exhibit will look fine either way. But the mechanism here is specific: whichever sculpture wins the People's Choice Award becomes part of the city's permanent collection, the same category that includes the Arc of Dreams. That's not a temporary honor. It's a piece staying in Sioux Falls indefinitely, chosen by whoever showed up to vote, while every other piece in this year's 80-sculpture lineup eventually goes back to its artist when the loan period ends.
The jury already used its say on Exquisite Trio. The rest of the collection's future, at least the part decided by direct public input, is still open through the end of the month. If you've walked past these sculptures all summer without registering that a countdown was attached to any of them, the next nine days are the window where that stops being true.
Grab a ballot from one of the boxes on Phillips Avenue, or vote online if the walk doesn't fit your schedule this week. Either way, if you're heading downtown to do it, there's now a slice of Totally Rad Pizza waiting near the Levitt and a rebuilt menu at Big Sioux Diner & Dive near Falls Park, both new additions to a walk that hasn't changed its route in years but has clearly changed what's around it.
Sioux Falls residents who follow this kind of local detail, the small civic mechanics and the businesses shifting around them, tend to be the same people who eventually think carefully about where they live in this city and why. If that describes you, Danielle Konechne has spent two decades paying attention to the same kind of texture in Sioux Falls neighborhoods, the things that don't show up in a listing description but shape what it actually feels like to live somewhere. If you're weighing a move within the city, or just curious what your own home might be worth in a market that keeps adding these small, specific changes, reach out for a free home valuation and a conversation grounded in the same level of detail.
