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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