Pappajohn Sculpture Park

How to Get There

From downtown Des Moines: The park is located in Western Gateway Park at the corner of Grand Ave and 15th St, just west of the downtown core. Street parking is available on Grand Ave and surrounding streets; the park is also a short walk from the Des Moines Central Station transit hub.

Overview

The John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park is a 4.4-acre (1.8 ha) park within Western Gateway Park in Des Moines, Iowa. It opened in 2009 with 24 sculptures, with four more acquired later. The sculpture park is administered by the Pappajohn Sculpture Park and contains works by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Jaume Plensa, Ai Weiwei, and Barry Flanagan.

Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas, two New York based architects, designed the landscape with grassy mounds and parabolic-shaped cutaways. These cutouts create walled-in spaces used to display the sculptures in groups of related artistic styles.

In 2011, White ghost by Yoshitomo Nara was installed in the park, after being exhibited in New York, as public art placed near the entrances to the Asia Society and the Park Avenue Armory.

In 2018, Pumpkin Large by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama was installed in the park. The bronze pumpkin is about 8 feet high, including a 3-foot pedestal. The surface has a pattern of recessed dots of different sizes, going all the way up to the stem.

A version of Robert Indiana's iconic LOVE sculpture was placed in the park in 2019.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Pappajohn Sculpture Park", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0