A Visit to Storm King Art Center
Whenever my schedule allows, I always try to spend time with my dear grandchildren, Jude and Truman - we always have so much fun!
Last week, the children came to visit me at my Bedford farm. After watching me host a special Facebook LIVE about baking and decorating cookies, and a brief swim in the pool, we decided to take the one-hour ride north to visit Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, New York - not far from the City of Newburgh. Widely celebrated as one of the world’s leading sculpture parks, Storm King’s 500-acre landscape of fields, hills, and woodlands provides the perfect setting for more than 100 carefully sited art installations created by some of today's most distinguished artists.
If you are ever in the area, I encourage you to stop by Storm King Art Center - it is definitely worth a visit. And, if you are in New York City this fall, Storm King's Annual Gala Dinner and Live Auction will be held on October 18th at the iconic Rainbow Room, honoring sculptor, Joel Shapiro, and the Ralph E. Ogden Foundation. Enjoy my photos.
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- This is Storm King’s Museum Building, which provides space for galleries, a bookshop, and offices. It was built in 1935 as a residence for the late banking specialist, Vermont Hatch, who owned it until his death in 1958.
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- Just outside the Museum Building is Louise Nevelson ‘City on the High Mountain’, 1983 – an assemblage of black-painted steel sourced from models for different sculptures she had created several years earlier.
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- This bronze work by Lynda Benglis is called ‘North South East West’, 1988/2009/2014-15. She created it using polyurethane foam poured over a large Ming ceramic pot and wire.
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- These are the Ionic Columns from the Armstrong Mansion at Danskammer Point, New York.
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- Jude and Truman are so athletic and full of energy – they loved running up and down the grassy hills. In the south fields, all these works are by Mark di Suvero. They include, from left to right: ‘Pyramidian’, 1987/1998. ‘She’, 1977-78; ‘Mon Père, Mon Père’, 1973–75; and, ‘Mother Peace’, 1969–70.
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- Here is a beautiful view of Storm King’s Maple Allée.
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- In this field, from left to right, all the works are by David Smith. ‘Primo Piano III’, 1962; ‘2 Circles 2 Crows’, 1963; ‘Primo Piano II’, 1962; ‘Untitled’, 1963; ‘Cubi XXI’, 1964; and ‘Circle and Box (Circle and Ray)’, 1963. Storm King has one of the most significant institutional holdings of David Smith’s works.
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- These are by Alexander Calder. From left to right: ‘Knobs’, 1976; ‘Gui (Mistletoe)’, 1976; and ‘Five Swords’, 1976. Calder is renowned as a pioneer of abstract sculpture. ‘Five Swords’ has been displayed in this location for more than 25-years.
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- Here is another sculpture by Alexander Calder called ‘Black Flag’, 1974. It was installed on the site in 1999.
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- This is Ursula von Rydingsvard’s ‘For Paul’, 1990-92/2001 and ‘Luba’, 2009–10. The primary material used is four-by-four lengths of cedar wood, which the artist stacked, glued, and cut freehand with a circular saw.
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- This is also by artist, David Smith, called ‘Becca’, 1964. Its elements are welded, a process in which pieces of steel are pressed together and heated with a blowtorch. Smith was considered a master of fine-art welding.
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- In the distance, several pieces dot the landscape, including Alexander Liberman’s, ‘Adam’, 1970; and Menashe Kadishman, ‘Suspended’, 1977.
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- This is Kenneth Snelson’s ‘Free Ride Home’, 1974. Named after a race horse, this sculpture is fashioned from a network of stainless steel cables knotted to aluminum tubes – and look closely, it only touches the ground at three points.
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- This is by Arnaldo Pomodoro, ‘The Pietrarubbia Group: il fondamento, l’uso, il rapporto’, 1975–76. He built it to commemorate Pietrarubbia, a dilapidated Italian village near his hometown.
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- This is Isamu Noguchi’s ‘Momo Taro’, 1977–78, a nine-part, 40-ton granite sculpture, anchored to a concrete base underground, and sitting atop a hill with beautiful views of the surrounding area.
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- Alexander Liberman created ‘Adonai’ in 1970–71 (refabricated 2000). ‘Adonai’ was one of a few sculptures Liberman made using six-foot-long gas storage tanks.
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- Heather Hart, ‘The Oracle of Lacuna’, 2017 is on view at Storm King through November. The site-specific work is made of shingles and other building materials. It is part of Outlooks— the center’s annual exhibition series.
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- This is by an unknown artist – Easter Island Head (Reproduction), 1970.
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- This is by Mia Westerlund Roosen, ‘Muro Series X’, 1979. It was commissioned by and created at Storm King as part of a series of the artist’s wall-like pieces from the 1970s. This was made by pouring concrete to form thin horizontal slabs that when stood up become monolithic vertical surfaces.
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- This is by Charles Ginnever, ‘Fayette: For Charles and Medgar Evers’, 1971. The piece was named for two brothers who were prominent leaders in the civil rights movement.
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- Here is another work by Charles Ginnever – ‘1971’, 1971.
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- This is by Alice Aycock, ‘Three-Fold Manifestation II’, 1987 (refabricated 2006). The artist describes it as “three bowls or whirling, skewed spaces that are tipped, so it’s as though you’re looking into disoriented worlds.”
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- Alice Aycock also created ‘Low Building with Dirt Roof (for Mary)’, 1973/2010. It was inspired by a farmhouse and a small cemetery on her family’s property.
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- Here is a work by Mark di Suvero, ‘Mahatma’, 1978-79. Over the years, Storm King has presented more than 90 of his sculptures, and currently owns a group of five of his large-scale pieces including this one.
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- One of the children’s favorites was Menashe Kadishman’s ‘Suspended’, 1977. This massive scale of steel work appears to be floating in mid-air.
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- Here is another view of the works by Alexander Calder, including ‘Knobs’, 1976, ‘Gui (Mistletoe)’, 1976, and ‘Black Flag’, 1974.
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- Jude loved Alyson Shotz’s ‘Mirror Fence’, 2003 (refabricated 2014).
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- This work by Joel Shapiro is Untitled, 1994.
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- Here is another piece Jude and Truman thought was great – Zhang Huan’s, ‘Three Legged Buddha’, 2007. It is a copper and steel sculpture standing 28-feet high and weighing more than 12-tons. It represents the bottom half of a sprawling, three-legged figure, one of whose feet rests on an eight-foot-high human head.
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- The work is comprised of nine sections of copper “skin,” each with an interior steel armature, held together with bolts and welds.
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- Richard Serra’s ‘Schunnemunk Fork’, 1990–91. This installation was constructed on a 10-acre rolling field bordering woodlands. It consists of four weathering steel plates set lengthwise and inserted into the ground at designated intervals. Each plate is eight-feet high and two-and-a-half inches thick, with about a third of the length of each rectangular plate visible and the remainder buried in the earth.
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- This is so beautiful – Andy Goldsworthy’s ‘Storm King Wall’, 1997-98.
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- Jude and Truman were so intrigued. Here is Jude examining the wall around one of the trees.
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- And here is another view of the winding wall from afar.
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- Andy Goldsworthy’s, ‘Storm King Wall’, 1997–98 is his first museum commission for a permanent work in the United States and his largest single installation to date. ‘Storm King Wall’ was originally imagined as a 750-foot-long dry stone wall snaking through the woods, but the artist continued the wall downhill to a nearby pond, and then uphill to Storm King’s western boundary at the New York State Thruway—totaling 2278-feet overall.
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- This is Mark di Suvero’s, ‘Frog Legs’, 2002.
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- And here is Maya Lin’s, ‘Storm King Wavefield’, 2007–08. The seven nearly four-hundred-foot-long “waves”, ranging 10 to 15-feet high appear so naturally in the landscape.
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- ‘Wavefield’ sits in front of Schunnemunk Mountain to the west and the Hudson Highlands to the south and east – so beautiful. Situated on an 11-acre site, it is the largest and last in a series of three of Lin’s wave fields – the other two are located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Miami, Florida. What a lovely trip to Storm King Art Center.
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