Audio: Sculpture Garden grows

If you haven’t been to The Sydney and Walda Bestoff Sculpture Garden in City Park, by all means go. Wander its shady paths, contemplate its 64 contemporary sculptures or cross over its quiet lagoon, where in spring hundreds of native Louisiana iris will burst into bloom. But that’s not all that’s blossoming at the sculpture garden these days. The New Orleans Museum of Art has announced a 6-acre expansion that will offer new works, new programming, an outdoor classroom, an amphitheater and a continued sensitivity to this environmental setting. We recently sat down with New Orleans Museum of Art director Susan Taylor to talk about all that’s going on at the Sculpture Garden.

So tell us, why the expansion?

The expansion is an opportunity to think a little bit more broadly and I would say boldly about NOMA’s engagement with the public. As you know, the Sculpture Garden is free and open to the public seven days a week. We saw this as an opportunity not only as a way to present 21^st-century sculpture, but also to create spaces whereby the kinds of programming that we’ve developed over the last several years has pride of place. As you mentioned, the amphitheater is a place where we’ll be able to present performances, film, theater, music, dance, all of the things that we do now in a more ad hoc and responsive way. This will provide us with a real setting still engaged with nature and enveloped by nature.

This will more than double the size of the sculpture garden.

That’s correct. It’s another 6 acres. It will, however, not double the number of sculptures. There’s space for 22 sculptures at the outdoor amphitheater. A small gallery space will provide an indoor gallery for work that, because of its fragility and the kinds of materials of which they’re made, cannot be outside. But there will be a direct visual relationship between the sculpture inside and outside.

Who’s designing the space?

The sculpture garden itself is being designed by a firm, Reed Hilderbrand, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of the reasons why we were so eager to work with them was because Doug Reed, who is the principal designer on our project, is a native of Louisiana, who studied at the landscape architecture school at LSU and who has a tremendous sensability and sensitivity to landscapes in the South as well as Louisiana and thinks very clearly about indigenous species and the relationship of water to land. We felt that we could jump right into a project with him without too much of a learning curve.

The architect for the small gallery space is Lee Ledbetter, who is our local architect who is incredibly gifted and thoughtful about the way gallery spaces need to be configured.

Will it be contiguous? Will you be able to see the difference between the new and the old space?

No. It will be different. We have taken a different approach to this garden, in that we have thought more fully about the relationship between the rest of the park and the water and land. It’s going to be a more open space with natural grasses and indigenous plants, boardwalks that are developed over root systems to protect them. There’s a wonderfully complex root system of live oaks in the new planned space. We want to protect them. There’s going to be a weir. The sculpture will be work both commissioned and purchased. It will have a different feel. Because there are programming components that really define the spaces in a natural way, there will be differentiations of land and landscape.

An artist’s rendering of the Sydney and Walda Bestoff Sculpture Garden; the new area will be reached by an underground ‘Moses Bridge’ (Photo: noma.org)

Have you chosen the art yet?

We’re in the process of choosing it right now. We’re looking at a number of different artists. We’ve commissioned two artists to do work for the garden. Sydney and Walda Bestoff are just the most remarkable partners in this undertaking and have this boundless energy to visit galleries in New York and elsewhere. We are putting together a collection of work that I think is very different from what we have in the current garden and yet there are connections and sensitivities that are similar. It’ll be a very interesting.

There’s a very fluid relationship between land, water and art, which I think will be very satisfying for visitors.

I haven’t heard of anything quite like this.

One of the most unique aspects of the garden [involves] how the two are going to be connected. We respected the request of City Park to connect the space, even though they are not contiguous. There will be what we call a Moses Bridge that goes under Roosevelt Mall that links the current garden to the future garden. It will be a bridge that goes through the water and up along the shore of the new gardens. Moses Bridge is kind of a colloquial name for it, but it will be unique I think, a unique experience.

It really involves looking at nature as part of the art form itself.

Correct. Also we’ve taken the opportunity to revisit what it means to have an outdoor amphitheater. There will not be hardscape. It will be a bermed landscape where people will be able to sit in the landscape. They’ll probably want to bring chairs, but it’s keeping it much more contextually faithful to the original landscape and species.

Tell me a little bit about the programming for your outdoor classroom and your outdoor theater. You’ve been really successful already with the yoga, films, theater productions and all sorts of things this is going to enhance.

The outdoor classroom it isn’t really a classroom per se. It’s an open space, which is a lawn space that allows a kind of gathering place for students as they make their way through the gardens. It will be not programmed as a classroom, but a place where people can gather, and we’re very interested in the relationship between science and art. We hope to engage students not only on the art side of things but also the environmental side.

Is this an expansion to the to the outdoors of what you do within your four walls indoors in the main museum?

Yes, in the sense that it provides enhanced programming for our public. For many people, we believe the gallery might be their first museum experience. Barriers of entry exist in all cultural institutions, whether it’s the way the architecture is situated or whether cost is a factor, but this will be an open and engaging and inviting experience for everyone. To us, it’s important to create access and to create an opportunity for learning through the arts. Really, the mission is to teach people how to look so that they’ll be able to see. I think that’s what this garden will do. It’s an opportunity to demystify the museum experience, to create opportunities for people to have access to art.

What’s the program or the play or the performance or the piece of art that you cannot wait to get to in this new space?

I’m very excited about the artists that we’ve been working with. I really look forward to animating the amphitheater space. I think with a stage that jets out over the water and the vistas that we’ll have, I really think it will inspire performers and musicians, authors, actors in ways that they haven’t had the opportunity to work before. I’m excited about that.

I do believe that NOMA and art museums in general can be this place of convergence for all of the arts, where music, dance, film come together around a conversation about the importance of art in a civilized society.

What’s the time frame on this project?

With fingers crossed, the project should be completed by the beginning of 2019.

It’s being privately funded, I understand.

Correct. We had a wonderful lead gift from Sydney and Walda Bestoff, who have been extraordinarily generous with the museum. We are well on our way to our fund-raising goal.

The Sydney and Walda Bestoff Sculpture Garden is open free to the public daily. For more information click here.