Sculpture park success requires a mind for business and an eye for beauty
In tiny Madrid, New Mexico, on the Turquoise Trail between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, a tiny lot nestled off the main road is home to Connie’s Photo Park. Between sleepy galleries and vintage diners, the photo park is an excellent place for visitors to stretch their legs and giggle with loved ones as they stick their faces into the gaps on a dozen hand-painted portraits of Southwestern scenes. These small moments of interaction with public art and local creativity add extra flavor for travelers, and allow tourists and locals alike to make memories. This could be in Madrid in the middle of the high desert, or at Cloud Gate, lovingly dubbed The Bean, in downtown Chicago.
Sculpture parks occupy a gray area in civic life. At first glance, it may seem like a straightforward process to incorporate art into public spaces, or to acquire land to adorn with sculptures. In actuality, designing a place for both art and nature leads to nuanced planning that the founders of these institutions often don’t anticipate at the outset.
Sculpture parks and their interactive nature have clear cultural, economic, and quality-of-life benefits. In a 2020 study published in Local Economy, researchers found numerous global examples of return on investment (ROI) for sculpture parks and trails, like millions raised for charity, thousands of pictures shared on social media, broken Guinness World Records, and significant capital infusions into the local economy due to tourism. Furthermore, sculpture parks provided outlets for thousands of artists to share their work, and more ways for families with children to spend time together outside.
If a municipality is interested in incorporating a sculpture park, the following are lessons learned from some of the most popular institutions in the country that have already walked that path.
Determine The Business Model
A sculpture park can be publicly or privately owned, or it can follow a public-private model, which blends monies from municipal government and adjoining for-profit or non-profit entities. All three have different routes for economic sustainability and success.
For example, private parks are likely to place a greater focus on attendance fees, annual memberships, and an endowment to continue operations over time. Public parks are typically government-funded, which means the budget is in the hands of taxpayers. No matter the business model, a key turning point for many successful sculpture parks is the donation of land.
For example, the Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, Mo., has been a public-private partnership since inception. The grounds and facilities are maintained by St. Louis County Parks & Recreation while the nonprofit arm takes care of the park’s sculptures and programming. The land was donated by Henry and Matilda Laumeier in the 1970s when Matilda befriended a man named Wayne Kennedy, the head of St. Louis County Parks & Recreation at the time. She weighed options about what to do with her house and land without children as heirs, and Kennedy convinced her to donate her property to become a public space. Meanwhile, Kennedy was in talks with St. Louis artist Ernest Trova, who agreed to donate 40 of his sculptures (a retail value of around $1 million) to launch the park.
“The stars aligned—a lot of individuals were willing to support this vision,” says Lauren Ross, the Executive Director of the Laumeier Sculpture Park. After the nonprofit arm of the organization was formed, shortly after opening, the collection began to grow. Since its founding in 1976, 72 acres of land have expanded to 105 with additional acquisitions. Today, approaching its 50th anniversary, Laumeier is one of 73 parks in the St. Louis County Parks & Recreation portfolio.
The park’s longevity stemmed from strategic partnerships among Kennedy and generous donors. Similarly, the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Mich., was the brainchild of the West Michigan Horticultural Society, which was interested in opening a public garden in the 1980s. By 1990, the team approached Fred Meijer as a partner who could donate land for the project while designating a home for his sculpture collection. After 13 years of planning, the enterprise opened to the public in 1995 as a 501(c)3 nonprofit funded from memberships, ticketed events, and an endowment. Since launching, the park has grown from 78 acres and fewer than 10 employees to 158 acres and 300 employees. In both 2023 and 2024, USA Today voted Meijer as the best sculpture park in the country. That growth and development look astounding at first glance, but they’re no accident.
“Like a lot of things in our professional lives, it really depends heavily on solid governance and strategic or master-planning processes,” says Steve LaWarre, the Senior Vice President of the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park. “We’re governed by a Board of Directors, and having good, reliable planning in place is critical to some of those long-range decisions when opportunities arise.”
Without that type of long-term planning, even if far-fetched right now, it’s difficult for budding municipal projects or organizations to know what to do in the future. Don’t underestimate the value of dreaming big and envisioning what a new public art venture could become in the years ahead. Simply putting thought to paper and distilling the team’s values can help with wise decisions when encountering a fork in the road.
Get The Finances Right
Over 50 percent of Meijer Gardens’ visitors are members who buy an annual package. Other elements like visitors’ fees and an amphitheater with a concert series make the organization fiscally sustainable. But the artwork is a key reason that people continue to visit the institution, and it has its own ROI over time. The team has a curation board advisory committee to determine which up-and-coming artists should be added to the collection. The team also includes a chief curator who determines which trends should be reflected in upcoming exhibitions.
“Art is one of those things where it’s hard to figure out. There’s a list of artists that every art-based institution would have to have in their collection, and that’s part of the planning,” says LaWarre.
Any new sculpture park has to decide on the point of view of its collection, and there is no shortage of options to consider: figurative works, historical pieces, modern artists, local artists, and more. Curators help determine the goal of the collection, which moves forward the process of purchasing pieces to continually attract new guests and boost the economics of the endeavor. Investing in seasoned curators is crucial to the institution’s ROI.
Meanwhile, the public-private partnership of Laumeier means the county earmarks about $600,000 per year in in-kind donations to the park by way of staffing municipal crews to maintain the grounds, along with administrative staff. The nonprofit arm has developed a $2-million operating budget for an annual park budget of $2.6 million. The nonprofit’s funding comes from an amalgamation of resources: individual donations, membership fees; county, state, and federal grants; private foundations; corporate donations; a summer camp; the gift shop; and ticketed events.
Yet, even for a diversified funding portfolio, Ross says there are, at large, not enough designated funding opportunities specifically for public art.
“I wish there were more,” she says. “I think a lot of visitors who come to the park assume that the county and government take care of all of the expenses, but that’s not the case.… It’s happening to a much smaller degree than they realize.”
Planning for the fiscal health of any new sculpture park requires brainstorming about all of the different line items throughout the year that can contribute to the budget. It also requires development officers and grant writers, contracted or staffed, who can help locate funding opportunities and solicit donations from public entities.
Invest In Artistic Talent
Sculpture parks are dual civic entities by nature, and balancing art in a larger park takes skill from professionals who know how to make the big picture shine.
“Our whole grounds are an intentional space,” LaWarre says. “Everything is in harmony. Monumental pieces are outside for the scale, but smaller, more intimate pieces are outside in formal or intimate gardens. [It’s a question of] topography and space that plays into the placement of an artwork.”
As an example, a massive sculpture with a prominent direct view may be best in the middle of a meadow with a walking path parallel to the direct view. If multiple views are needed for a piece, it may be best in a space where visitors can freely wander around it. If a sculpture is in conversation with another piece, there may need to be natural elements that guide viewers from one artwork to another, like paths, signage, or deliberate foliage.
To make these decisions in an informed way, operators need to lean on landscape architects, civil architects, and curators. These individuals can make the engineering determinations to ensure a piece of art is safe for the public, along with design skills to integrate sculptures into natural spaces.
Prepare For The Lifespan Of Sculptures
Museums are typically indoors to protect fragile materials from the elements. Temperature, humidity, and light can be controlled. That is not so with sculpture parks. Every municipality has a unique climate, and what may work in a sculpture park in Arizona very likely may not work in Florida. Sculptures are also prey to insects, birds, and animals who burrow into the nooks and crannies of pieces.
Museums are also equipped with security guards who patrol rooms and ensure that visitors are not touching the art. At night, the building is locked. But in sculpture parks, employees cannot guard outdoor pieces like they would a painting in a room. Between human and natural interference, Ross says maintenance costs add up to form a significant line item.
“Sculptures require a lot of cleaning, care, maintenance and, eventually, more intensive conservation. It’s quite expensive,” she says. “People don’t realize that touching the sculpture, there’s oils on your skin that can speed up the process of materials breaking down,” says Ross. Therefore, educating visitors via signage, website messaging, and direct conversation when they enter the campus is an important part of preserving the art and protecting investments in curated pieces.
The issues of maintenance and preservation are compounded when sculpture parks are public and operated through municipal budgets. While there are important values inherent in civic spaces that are free to enter, there is no admission income to offset the cost of maintenance. New endeavors need to budget for adequate staffing to keep up maintenance, even for free or donated sculptures, to ensure park attractions last.
Collect And Curate Thoughtfully
At the Meijer Gardens, there is a collection of permanent pieces on the campus that Fred Meijer collected himself. They are installed permanently outside. Indoors, there are numerous rotating exhibitions, and some of those rotating sculptures can lead to a permanent indoor or outdoor acquisition. The garden also participates in long-range loans from other museums throughout the country to adorn different spaces, like a rooftop sculpture garden.
But outdoors, very few materials can be exposed to the elements permanently without breaking down.
“It’s not an accident that many sculpture park collections feature stone, painted metal, and materials that are durable and resilient to the elements. It’s definitely a factor in acquiring a piece,” says Ross at Laumeier. “We get offers of gifts of works of art, but if it’s made out of materials that will rust in no time or disintegrate, it’s not a responsible act to acquire.”
Thus, there are limits as to which sculptures can reasonably enter a permanent outdoor collection. But a trick to help diversify exhibitions is seasonal offerings, and incorporating rotations of work within available indoor spaces. Commissioning temporary outdoor pieces with shorter runs—for only a few months at a time—is another option available to sculpture parks if curators know a brilliant piece will disintegrate in a permanent collection.
Weigh Design Options For The Future
Laumeier Sculpture Park features numerous types of terrain—grassy open fields, woodlands, and paved and unpaved paths with varying conditions and grades. While the variety of landscapes preserves natural features, it creates limitations from an accessibility standpoint.
“There’s been lots of change in the park industry with accessibility to make sure that visitors can navigate space,” Ross says.
The balance of preserving the landscape and making it accessible and multifunctional becomes even more complicated when sculpture parks are reliant on ticketed events in the annual budget. Laumeier doesn’t have electricity hookups throughout the campus, and if the park wanted to host nighttime events, it would need them. The park’s preference to preserve the natural terrain means the team also must contend with an invasive case of bush honeysuckles, which are costly and difficult to eradicate.
Having a preserved, untouched space is preferable to some, and access and flexibility are more important to others. Therefore, any team opening its own sculpture park needs to make astute design decisions with future growth and values in mind.
Remember Art Doesn’t Exist In A Bubble
Like any cultural institution that seeks to have longevity, LaWarre says a consistent challenge for the team is providing new experiences to remain relevant for guests who are members year after year. Meijer Gardens, even for its popularity and longevity, is also in no bubble in the larger national business landscape.
“We face some of the same challenges as other organizations, like being able to have access to the appropriate supply chain and high-caliber workforces,” LaWarre says.
In St. Louis, Ross has observed that the ROI on the region’s sports teams is often analyzed and accounted for in city-planning conversations. Sometimes, the economic impact of parks and the arts is undervalued, and is overshadowed by the ROI on sports events even though reports show that cultural tourists spend more money beyond the price of a ticketed event.
With this in mind, Ross recommends that leaders envisioning their own public art ventures should start by taking the temperature of the local government and finding potential operational partners to help tackle the project, not unlike how Meijer and Laumeier came into existence.
“That kind of community investment may be hard ahead of time, but it’s important to people,” she says. “Starting out, there’s lots of first steps that involve conversations with elected officials for potential sources of funding, and with the community as well.”
