Outdoor Sculpture

The Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum’s grounds feature sculptures that delight visitors of all ages.

The Rooftop Sculpture Garden, which debuted with Birds in Art 2021, features eight sculptures along with a pergola and seating options, all designed to encourage visitors to enjoy art, nature, and seasonally changing vistas. The space debuts with sculptures by Walter T. Matia, Bart Walter, Don Rambadt, Simon Gudgeon, Sherry Salari Sander, Louise Peterson, Ken Newman, and Harriet Whitney Frishmuth. Bart Walter’s eagle, Freedom, was made possible by the E.F. Jablonski Family Foundation in memory of Edwin F. Jablonski. The Woodson Art Museum commissioned Walter Matia’s sculpture, Spring Break, with generous support from the Dwight and Linda Davis Foundation. The Rooftop Sculpture Garden is possible, thanks to these generous donors and sponsors: the John and Alice Forester Charitable Trust, the Dwight and Linda Davis Foundation, the E. F. Jablonski Family Foundation, The Samuels Group, Wausau Tile, and Ionic Structures and Design.

Elsewhere throughout the grounds, artistic styles range from Deborah Butterfield’s Kua to Burt Brent’s The Heavyweight and Kent Ullberg’s striking bronze whooping cranes that stand as iconic sentinels at the garden’s entrance.

Artist and landscape architect Bonnie Gale and her assistant Jonna Evans created a seven-foot-tall, domed, willow structure, Living Willow Dreams, June 24-30, 2018, in the Woodson Art Museum’s Margaret Woodson Fischer Sculpture Garden. Bonnie Gales’s living willow sculpture project is supported by a grant from The Dudley Foundation. Learn more about Living Willow Dreams in this interview with the artist.

A nearly thirty-foot-tall, site-specific sculpture, The Dance, of a sandhill-crane pair was on view for more than two years until fall 2018. This temporary installation, designed to be on view for a few years, was created June 21-25, 2016, from saplings by Boston artists Donna Dodson and Andy Moerlein, known as The Myth Makers.