Park It

The conceptual design for the Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park was revealed with humble fanfare before a packed house at Town Hall last week. As with the Oscars, it took a while to get to the good stuff; first there was a long line of people congratulating each other for their investment and time and vision and hard work in bringing the project--what is to be literally a third outpost of SAM--to this current phase. I sat in a big group of artists while John Shirley thanked Mimi Gates, Greg Nickels thanked the Shirleys, Ron Sims thanked himself for visiting an artist's studio and suddenly discovering the power of the arts, and Gates (SAM's director)--looking very Annie Hall in a chic suit and tie--thanked everyone.

Finally, the presentation was turned over to Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi, the New York-based architects who have been charged with creating a park out of three separate land parcels abutting Myrtle Edwards Park. They did so, I must say (and I haven't been able to work up much enthusiasm for this park until now), with a great deal of grace and sophistication. It's a think-y design catering not so much to our rural-idyll fantasies about what parks should be, but to the realities of bringing a park to a city.

Their design, a set of graduated switchbacks that, as Manfredi said, "reclaim the topography" of the area, will create a new elevation in a neighborhood once re-graded. The design works hard to bring us back to nature--with steps down to the water and a number of different landscape environments--but also takes urban movement into account. It doesn't shut out or ignore the trains and car traffic, but accommodates them, with excellent views and the possibility of sculpture in the underpasses and garages. This is not, it turns out, simply a repository for old works (such as Alexander Calder's Eagle, the only piece of art shown in the lovely model, with its delicate white buildings and glass-bubble trees; "The one the Philadelphia Museum didn't want," someone near me whispered), but also for new installations and commissions. So where is this art? SAM's deputy director of art, Lisa Corrin, gave a long, elegant reply that really boiled down to... not acquired yet. The money for it has yet to be raised.

And there's another issue: How will such an intentional park be policed? "It's gonna be heaven for skateboarders," I heard someone say.

emily@thestranger.com