Frederick Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park The Outside Sculptures
Frederick Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park is a world class park with world
class attractions in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This is more than a garden,
it is a community and area treasure with many aspects of the fine arts on
permanent and traveling displays. Listed below are the major attractions:
- The Sculpture Park
- Gallery Collection
- Garden Trails & Conservatory Collection
- Sculpture Exhibitions
- Children’s Garden
- Outdoor Concert Stage
Because this park offers so many attractions, I will just cover The Sculpture Park.
The 30+ acre Sculpture Park is set within the gardens 125 acre site. It features over 80
outdoor sculptures from reknowned artists, including one of the two existing bronzes
of DaVinci’s Horse Sculpture. Visiting artists are continually featured, so you see
new artists’ works set into the Gardens.
Artists represented in the Park include August Rodin, Aristide Maillol,
Jacques Lipchitz, Henry Moore, Louise Nevelson, Mark di Suvero, Magdalena Abakanowicz,
George Rickey, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje can Bruggen, Juan Munoz, Hanneke Beaumont,
Louise Bourgeois, and Mimmo Paladino are featured. This open air museum has the most
comprehensive collection of outdoor sculptures within the Midwest.
There is a special element of discovery that permeates the park – you can
view the sculptures in and through meadows and trees, valleys and hills from many
different vantage points. The Sculpture Park includes a variety of tour options: guided
tram tours, adult guided walking tours (special dates and times)
and self-guided audio tours.
If you haven’t made it to the Meijer Gardens yet, Leonardo DaVinci’s
Horse, Il Cavallo alone is worth the trip. Pictured above, the scale is gigantic.
This equestrian giant weighs 15 tons and is 24 feet tall. What you can’t see is the
placement, set in an area between hills so the horse can’t be viewed until you wind
around the gentle hills and there in the middle of a plaza sets the most magnificent
bronze equestrian sculpture in North America. The most amazing part is that the
15th Century horse was only created in clay by Leonardo and destroyed by the
French Army when they invaded Milan, Italy in 1499 before it could be cast. His
blueprints and drawings were closely followed and this masterpiece came into being
in 1999 when the artist, Nina Akamu, cast the bronze form at an art foundry
in New York state. The second casting was shipped and unveiled in Milan, Italy in
Sept, 1999, 500 years to the day after DaVinci abandoned his project.
Meijer Gardens on Flickr
Link to Video Tour of the Sculpture Park
photos by Bonnie Westbrook
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The authors of the this blog write about Grand Rapids Real Estate,
the Greater Grand Rapids MI area, and what it is like to live in West
Michigan. We believe: Grand Rapids is a Great Place to Live!
Westbrook Realty Grand Rapids MI Real Estate
Contact Terry 616-292-7263
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