As part of the Summer Arts Initiative, Hood Museum of Art director Derrick Cartwright led a trip to the Storm King Art Center, an outdoor sculpture museum in Mountainville, N.Y., last Saturday.
The Summer Arts Initiative consists of a series of events titled "Art and the Land", which include performances, trips and art hikes, all highlighting the relationship between the arts and the environment.
The trip to Storm King was composed of a group of about 30 students and area residents, ranging from professors and arts experts to complete novices like this reporter, and the mild summer day was perfect for visiting an outdoor museum.
Storm King, named after a neighboring mountain, was founded in 1960. Originally meant to be a museum dedicated to paintings from Hudson Valley painters, the founders decided to add sculptures to the facility, too.
The Center went through a major growth phase when it bought 13 works by the sculptor David Smith and began arranging them in a way that blended in with the 500-acre site. Since then, the Center has gradually expanded its collection to include more than 100 sculptures.
A completely new concept when it was established, Storm King still remains quite unusual. As the president of the Center aptly wrote, "The floor of its main exhibition area is grass and fields. Walls are formed by trees and hills. The roof is sky."
The most important aspect that the Center considers while adding sculptures is the way in which they blend in with the surroundings. Their effort has apparently paid off, as the works, made from materials as varied as wood, stone and metal, stand in complete harmony with the trees, grass and surrounding mountains.
The sculptures range in size from a few feet tall to ones that tower over the surrounding landscape. They are placed under trees, on top of hills, on flat land and among grass, so that these almost become a part of the sculpture itself. In fact, it is difficult to imagine being able to fully appreciate their beauty if placed within the confines of a man-made structure.
On arrival at the parking lot, the visitor is immediately struck by "Eight Positive Trees" by Menashe Kadishman. Essentially flat cutouts with outlines shaped as trees, group would, in a sense, be incomplete without the trees actually growing around them.
Storm King also has a picnic area where one can enjoy a meal under shaded trees with a view of Alexander Liberman's "Adonai," a massive sculpture made of long metallic cylinders, arranged to form a three-dimensional geometric structure that does not look at all out of place in the lush greenery that surrounds it.
For the lazy art connoisseur, the Center has also thoughtfully provided a tram service. A tram goes around the entire facility every half-hour, and stops at some of the major exhibits.
Whether one takes the tram or walks, one cannot help notice the varying plants and grasses. This is part of an effort that the Center calls "creative farming". The idea behind it is to cultivate grasses and wildflowers native to the area, in a way that protects these plants while preventing weeds from taking over and enhancing the aesthetic beauty of the facility. This furthers the concept that the Art Center is not made up of the individual sculptures alone, but the entire environment created.
The Center also has a small building that serves as the physical "museum." It has galleries with some of the smaller sculptures, and maquettes of some of the larger sculptures outsides.
A must-see is the special three-year exhibition, which opened in May 2001, of Alexander Calder's works that has 18 of his pieces, on loan from the Calder Foundation, displayed mainly around the museum building. The Center also has "The Arch," a magnificent work in black metal, as part of its permanent collections.
The last sculpture commissioned by Storm King was Andy Goldsworthy's "Storm King Wall," a more than 2000-foot-long wall that twists along the ground through trees and over hills. A team of wall-building experts from the UK took two years to assemble this wall, working with whatever rocks they had, to create something that extends the boundaries of what is generally thought of as art.
Storm King has its share of quirky art. Behind the museum building, set in low grass, are two benches, one made entirely of quarters, and the other of old half-dollar coins. A boat painted as a mermaid is positioned on an island within a small pond.
Overall, Storm King redefines the very idea of a museum. The experience changes from visit to visit, as it is affected by the wind, the temperature, the sunlight and even the season of the year. The sculptures themselves change constantly, as the rains reshape the stone, the moisture rusts the metal, and the wood is chipped away by birds -- and that is what makes it most beautiful.
