deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum

The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is nestled in the woods just 20 miles west of Boston in Lincoln, Massachusetts and encompasses 30 acres, with usually 60 sculptures featured at any given time. The deCordova is fairly close to Walden Pond State Reservation, which makes for a nice full day of tourist fun—I always try to bring out of town visitors to the deCordova, especially in the warmer months, since the Sculpture Park is really the showcase of the institution. The entire area feels remote and sacred—and indeed, the deCordova is cloistered among tall trees, with a winding driveway up to the museum that feels right out of Alice and Wonderland. The deCordova takes inspiration from the natural landscape, using it as its gallery, immediately apparent as you drive up, with sculptures all around you, varying in style and size. Many of the pieces are mammoth, and truly so enticing it is difficult to keep yourself as an adult from climbing upon them—let alone the children who frequent the park, with families, on school trips, or those who attend the onsite preschool—the only such art-museum-embedded preschool in the country.

In fact, several of the sculptures, like the DeWitt Godfrey’s Lincoln, are open to exploring. The sense of community and freedom at the DeCordova is delightfully pervasive. Other interactive works like Matisse’s Musical Fence and Dan Graham’s Crazy Spheroid—Two Entrances invite visitors to create their own artistic encounters and experiences in the moment. I have also brought a picnic or journal to the Park, which encourages anyone to stretch out under the sun or shade and take in art in the context of nature, birds chirping and children laughing.  

The deCordova was established in 1950 and is the largest park of its kind in New England, located on the former estate of Julian de Cordova (1851-1945), son of a Jamaican merchant. Julian de Cordova, a successful businessman and investor from Somerville, Massachusetts was passionate about travel and art, believing “the visual arts served as a medium for self-improvement and enlightenment.” He hoped to spread this gospel buy sharing his collections and donated the estate to the town of Lincoln.

The deCordova from the beginning emerged behind a broad vision promoting visual arts education, and was the only museum featuring works of living New England artists. Founding director, Frederick P. Walkey (MFA grad) actively pursued the institution’s educational mission, and quickly established the DeCordova as a center in New England for new, contemporary art, including Pop Art and Boston's post-war expressionist movement. Today the mission of the deCordova is to “foster the creation, exhibition, and exploration of contemporary art through our exhibitions, learning opportunities, collection, and unique park setting. We engage all visitors with exhibitions and programs that connect our audiences to contemporary art and culture.”  The history of engagement and connection to education is still central to its goals.

The institution’s name also implies a specific focus to this mission. Originally deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, the institution changed its name to deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum “to emphasize its renewed focus on sculpture and to support the institution’s goal of becoming a premier Sculpture Park by 2020.” The deCordova is constantly rotating its huge, modern and contemporary sculpture and site-specific installations, with most works on loan to the Museum. The Museum’s Corporate Program connects with local businesses to support the institution and regional artists through membership initiatives and Art Loan options.

The deCordova’s Permanent Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, including several works in the Sculpture Park, and those housed in the beautiful, multi-level modern museum completed in 1998, and comprises over 3,500 artworks in photography, prints, painting, drawing, sculpture, multi-media, and new media. Photography constitutes over 1,500 of these assets, including collections by Harold Edgerton, Charles “Teenie” Harris, Aaron Siskind, Jules Aarons, Larry Fink, Edward Steichen, and Bradford Washburn. The Museum also features “one of the largest and most comprehensive museum collection of works by artists of the New England region since c. 1950, with particular depth in Boston artists in general and members of the mid-twentieth-century Boston Expressionist group.”  The Museum’s Dewey Family Gallery features exhibitions pulling from the Permanent Collection organized thematically, and including interventions and interpretations by contemporary artists.

The deCordova brought in a new leadership a year ago, when John B. Ravenal became Executive Director. Ravenal was previously at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA), and served as President of the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC). I plan to look more into Ravenal’s background and experience as I delve further into this research projects. A cursory review of the deCordova’s website also reveals some interesting approaches to managing digital objects and information. The website is incredibly informative, but not very interactive. In fact, the only searchable portion in terms of digital assets is a directory of the sculpture park works—which includes rich metadata for each object, and a few options for querying the catalog. In thinking of the MOAC case study in this week’s readings, I would think the rotating collection model would provide even more challenges for a museum’s efforts to maximize information management. The deCordova would also do well to take the advice from Coburn and Baca, that beyond digital objects, “creating additional content and contextual tools, building access points based on data standards and controlled vocabularies, and identifying audiences and their needs and behaviors,” (p. 3) are vital ways to enhance services in terms of a digital presence.

The Museum is also working towards going more green/working towards sustainability, which I hope to investigate further. Finally, the master plan of becoming the nation’s leading sculpture park is incredibly ambitious and I look forward to examining the strategies and implementation timeline for that vision. Interestingly, the press release and FAQs page about the initiative never once reference the word digital.