I, too, am the landscape

“Museum”: white wall, a spotlight, do not touch, standing, crowded, maze of galleries, walking slowly. A separation.

The Storm King Art Center is a 500 acre open-air sculpture park and a completely unique context to view art. Although only a few of the sculptures are allowed to be touched, there exists a cohabitation, a relationship between me, the sculptures, and the earth. I lie down on the cold, dying grass. Eyes open, blue sky and sculpture above.

The vast scale and openness allows for a number of things not typically experienced in a traditional museum setting:

• Deception in scale between photos and real life, the only real way to experience the context surrounding the sculptures is to exist in the same space as them.
• Exploration and freedom are really emphasized. There is no clear path, no signs pointing the way. You can run, you can walk, you can roll down the hill, lie down, wander through the forest and down to the river. It felt like a scaled up version of how a park or playground feels to a kid, since you are so small the world seems so large. If that makes sense. Additionally, the map lacked many reference photos so I found the best route was walking towards whatever caught my eye.
• Within the first hour of being there, my phone decided to bug out and shut down, rebooting with 6% battery, when it was previously in the 90s. Cool, love that. Having my phone basically die made the day interesting in that I couldn’t seek out more information about the sculptures (they had titles and artist names, as well as an online link for information, but no history printed on the descriptive label itself), I had to observe them at face value. Which I feel could be comparable to walking through a gallery without reading the labels (which I also do often, unless something particular sticks out).
• I let my imagination run a bit, as I think most people do when it comes to museums (The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Night at the Museum franchise, etc.), though I think the lack of defined walls, the smaller or less visible quantity of security, and the fact you could be in the middle of a field, turn around 360 degrees, and not see another soul within eyesight may have fueled my thoughts. I pondered about how it would be staying there after dark, or being an alien or next generation of human being confused by past relics (the sculptures, perhaps buried halfway in dirt).