Tag Archives: deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum
Last Days of DeWitt Godfrey’s Lincoln at DeCordova Connected Past and Future
Farewell Lincoln (150 feet long, Cor-ten steel and bolts, installed 2012) events, October 22,2023
De-installing Lincoln October 23, 2023:
It is simpler for me to select from photos of two final days with Lincoln than from so many moments through more than a decade of great days in deCordova Sculpture Park. I hope to do a future post with significant overview of Lincoln, plus other newer artworks by DeWitt Godfrey. The good news after Lincoln has gone is that its numerous cylinders can become parts of exciting new sculptures in other alluring destinations.
See Six Sculptures by Melvin Edwards in Different Seasons at deCordova before they Leave this Spring!!
The deCordova Sculpture Park is a great place to take in several selected works by one artist, especially Melvin Edwards! You can get close to all sides of each artwork and recognize connections to related sculptures within your view. Circle them on snowshoes or other ways this winter; stroll among them in the spring. Feeling lucky to live so near, I’ll pass along related links, quotes, and photos now.
Public Art in Somerville Highlights History of deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln
Public art in Somerville has enlightened me in many ways in recent years. Here are two more examples, each enlivening my resources as a long-time volunteer guide at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln. Both focus on fascinating aspects of Somerville’s Union Glass Company, owned by Julian deCordova through the early years of the twentieth century. One is among the seven vibrant panels of the Union Square History Murals on the building where Webster Avenue (55-50) and Prospect Street (70) intersect. The other is a bright sturdy signpost, among more than fifty others in Conway Park on Somerville Avenue. Here are photos, quotes, and notes to elaborate their connections.
Jaume Plensa’s Sculptures Make Many Meaningful Connections
Jaume Plensa’s Humming came to deCordova Sculpture Park almost ten years ago, generating innumerable reminders of how powerful sculpture can be. As a guide at the park, Humming has given me reliable ways to connect with others about how and why a tall translucent entrancing head might come to be. Humming has brought perspective to other art in the park, and it has led me to more sculpture by the same artist as well.
Art Grows from Trees: Alan Sonfist and Richard Rosenblum at deCordova
Sonfist’s The Endangered Species of New England has been part of the Sculpture Park since 2013. Rosenblum’s Venusvine, created 1990, has been there since 1996. Both artworks reflect their artists’ deeply rooted work with trees. Both are metal renderings of natural forms. Both artworks have decisive locations in the park. They’ve held their ground while other artworks have moved around, left or entered in recent years.
Artists Help Us Learn from Trees: Maren Hassinger and Josephine Halvorson at deCordova Sculpture Park
Josephine Halvorson’s Measure (Tree) and Maren Hassinger’s Monuments 3 and 6 have expanded my range in relating to trees. That is true for several other artworks at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, so I’ll hope to follow up in future posts with more examples. But I’ll start with these two artists because their processes give specific attention to trees. Measure (Tree) involved the artist in close observation while painting a tree’s elements onto a wooden plank. Both Monuments involved many people in carefully weaving assorted branches of local trees into geometric structures and patterns. Quotes from the Trustees website explain more. Links to each artist’s site offer context. My photos give glimpses of the presence of these artworks among trees in the park in different seasons.
Nancy Winship Milliken, Pasture Song, plus Earth Press Project: Witness
Pasture Song at deCordova, was originally scheduled to depart this summer. What great news that it will stay another year! ….Meanwhile another time-sensitive matter has sped up my posting about Nancy Milliken’s work. That is Earth-Press Project: Witness, which calls on all of us to each offer one word that might be imprinted in an adobe block of earth for an installation at Minute-Man National Historic Park in Lincoln.
A Radiant Painting Generates Sixth Mural for Greenway Wall
“Carving Out Fresh Options,” Diptych Painting by Shara Hughes Leads Up to a Monumental Mural on the Rose Kennedy Greenway
The mural was scaled up about twelve times from the original painting, but also cropped and shaped to fit the curving, choppy features of the Greenway Wall (one side of the air intake structure building).
The diptych (two-part) oil painting will be on view at deCordova in the museum through May 2019, while the mural is up on the Greenway Wall in Dewey Square Park, Boston.
Being in the Hands of Ursula von Rydingsvard
In connection with the exhibition Expanding Abstraction at the deCordova Museum (April 7—September 17, 2017) the museum’s Process Gallery highlights the art of Ursula von Rydingsvard and other women artists with work in deCordova Sculpture Park. I’m posting now to extend the connection to a recent monumental sculpture by Ursula von Rydingsvard at MIT.
Beverly Pepper, A Presence of Her Own
Lately I’ve been motivated by my goal to post about every woman artist with work on the Boston Public Art Walk before Women’s History Month next year. Sudden Presence is Beverly Pepper’s Cor-ten steel sculpture on that walk. Suddenly I saw how much I had been missing.
Art Outdoors 