Sculpture gardens: Why the time is just right for outdoor art
“Outdoor art is having a moment,” said Elissaveta Brandon in SmithsonianMag .com. Throughout the country, as socialdistancing rules have shuttered museums and discouraged indoor gatherings, “sculpture parks have become outdoor living rooms,” attracting casual strollers and picnickers who, by instinctively embracing the stimulation of such public spaces, are “cementing the importance of an art movement that began in the 1960s.” And who can blame them? “There is something particularly dynamic about outdoor art—a constant dialogue between form, material, changing seasons, and changing light,” and if you are near a major museum or university, you are probably near at least one of the country’s 300 sculpture parks. I recently set out to revisit a few favorite sites in the Northeast, wondering if putting up with Covid hurdles such as timed ticketing would be worth it, said Lance Esplund in The Wall Street Journal. “The answer was a resounding yes.”
The history of American sculpture parks actually begins in South Carolina, said Pauline Frommer in Frommers.com. Brookgreen Gardens, founded in 1931 and located about 20 miles south of Myrtle
Beach, is a 300-acre garden that is now home to the nation’s largest collection of statuary: “1,445 works, including a spectacular rendering of the goddess Diana by Augustus Saint-Gaudens.” But treasure troves of contemporary work began emerging in more recent decades. It’s hard to beat the setting of Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park, where works by Louise Nevelson, Alexander Calder, and Ellsworth Kelly enjoy views of the city’s skyline and across Elliot Bay to the Olympic Mountains. Visiting Dallas’ Nasher Sculpture Center, which reopened last week, is “like a walk-through cram session for an Intro to Modern Art final exam.” Works by Picasso, de Kooning, and many other masters adorn its verdant garden.
Storm King is another special place, said Simon Schama in the Financial Times, and not just because of its size and proximity to New York City. The 500-acre sculpture park sits along the same beautiful stretch of the Hudson River that gave birth to American landscape painting. And the work is spectacular. Richard Serra’s weatheredsteel Schunnemunk Fork strikes a harmonious balance with nature, while “a whole herd of Mark di Suvero’s pieces stand in the tall grass like so many post-industrial dinosaurs nibbling at the Jurassic pasture.” Elsewhere, Maya Lin’s Storm King WaveField, a rippled grass field completed in 2008, sits in dialogue with an undulating half-mile-long fieldstone wall created by Andy Goldsworthy in the 1990s. Goldsworthy characterized the wall as a gentle wrestling match between stones and trees: Sometimes the living elements win, sometimes the lifeless structure. “You feel this— along with the everyday pondering of vitality and mortality—now more than ever.”