The Olympic Sculpture Park, created and operated by the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), is a public park with modern and contemporary sculpture in downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. The park, which opened January 20, 2007, consists of a outdoor sculpture museum, an indoor pavilion, and a beach on Puget Sound. It is situated in Belltown at the northern end of the Central Waterfront and the southern end of Myrtle Edwards Park.
The Olympic Sculpture Park is a free-admission outdoor sculpture park with both permanent outdoor sculpture, temporary works, and site-specific installations. The Seattle Art Museum regularly rotates a major artwork at the Olympic Sculpture Park, including installations by Victoria Haven from 2016 - 2017, Spencer Finch from 2017 - 2019, and Regina Silveira from 2019 - 2020.
History
The former industrial site was occupied by the oil and gas corporation Unocal until the 1970s and subsequently became a contaminated brownfield before the Seattle Art Museum proposed to transform the area into one of the only green spaces in Downtown Seattle. The park's lead designer was Weiss/Manfredi Architects, who collaborated with Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture, Magnusson Klemencic Associates and other consultants.
Background
The idea of green space for large, monumental sculpture in Seattle was first discussed between Virginia and Bagley Wright, Mary and Jon Shirley (former president of Microsoft and Chairman of the Seattle Art Museum Board of Directors at the time), and then Seattle Art Museum director (and wife of William Gates Sr.) Mimi Gardner Gates. The idea grew further during a discussion in 1996 between Robert Measures, Martha Wyckoff, and Mimi Gardner Gates while stranded on a fly fishing trip in Mongolia due to a helicopter crash. Wyckoff, being a trustee of the Trust for Public Land, soon after began an effort to identify possible locations for the park.
A $30 million gift from Mary and Jon Shirley established them as foundational donors. As part of constructing the sculpture park, $5.7 million was spent transforming of the seawall and underwater shoreline inside Myrtle Edwards park. A three-level underwater slope was built with 50,000 tonnes of riprap. The first level of the slope is large rocks to break up waves. The second is a flat "bench" level to recreate an intertidal zone. The lower level is covered with smaller rocks designed to attract sea life and large kelp. The aim for the recreated strand was to help revitalize juvenile salmon from the Duwamish River and serve as a test site for future efforts.
Community concerns
Prior to the construction of the park, some community members expressed concern that the Waterfront Streetcar would be shut down, as plans required demolition of the streetcar's maintenance and storage facility, located on a portion of the building site. Although staff offered to modify the carbarn into a sculpture to fit into the park, the building was demolished and the line shut down in November 2005. The streetcar route, named by National Geographic Society as one of the 10 Great Streetcar routes, had been popular with tourists and locals.
Collections
Current sculpture
Bunyon's Chess (1965), Mark di Suvero
Curve XXIV (1981), Ellsworth Kelly
Eagle (1971), Alexander Calder
Echo (2011), Jaume Plensa
Eye Benches I, II and III (1996), Louise Bourgeois
Father and Son (2004–2006), Louise Bourgeois
Love & Loss (2005), Roy McMakin
Mary's Invitation: A Place to Regard Beauty (2014), Ginny Ruffner
Neukom Vivarium (2006), Mark Dion
Perre's Ventaglio III (1967), Beverly Pepper
Persephone Unbound (1965), Beverly Pepper
Schubert Sonata (1992), Mark di Suvero
Seattle Cloud Cover (2006), Teresita Fernández
Sky Landscape I (1983), Louise Nevelson
Split (2003), Roxy Paine
Stinger (1999), Tony Smith
Two Plane Vertical Horizontal Variation III (1973), George Rickey
Untitled (2004–2007), Roy McMakin
Wake (2004), Richard Serra
Wandering Rocks (1967), Tony Smith
Former works
Riviera (1971–1974) by Anthony Caro
Typewriter Eraser, Scale X by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen
Conservation
Maintenance of the sculptures has been an ongoing challenge. Bordering the Puget Sound, a large body of salt water, the park environment has been corrosive to pieces like Bunyon's Chess, made primarily of exposed wood and metal. Conservation work on Bunyon’s Chess was completed by the museum in 2018.