Seattle keeps knocking it out of the park. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) In the latest news on just how excellent this city is, Olympic Sculpture Park was first to be featured in Artsy's “11 of the World’s Greatest Sculpture Parks, from Seattle to Oslo.” Author Rachel Lebowitz paints it as an “elevated swath of green space peppered with evergreen and deciduous trees, affording stunning views of the bay," noting the park’s history, natural beauty, and selection of arts and programming, and describing the location of the park with an ode to the elegance of Jaume Plensa’s Echo: “[the] 46-foot-tall head gazes across the Puget Sound toward the Olympic Mountains, a gesture that nods to the mythical home of the Greek gods, Mount Olympus.”

Overall, it was a short and excellent overview of the Seattle Art Museum park and its offerings, but only locals will experience the full breadth of its magic. I'm particularly fond of its spacious amphitheater, crunchy gravel walkways, and, when the summer lighting is just right, the mild clouds of dust from strolling visitors that amplify the sunlight’s aura around the sculptures.

The park hosts temporary installations in addition to its permanent ones; the site-specific Latent Home Zero by Tacoma-based Neddy Award-winning artist Christopher Paul Jordan ran from June to October of last year, and looked like one of those pay-a-quarter-to-look tourist viewfinders/binocular telescopes, though instead of showing a view, it was pre-loaded with collaged images, while Spencer Finch: The Western Mystery, which opened on April 1, includes "a nebulous formation of suspended glass panes... [that create] a moving abstraction of a sunset, based on actual sunsets photographed from Seattle over Puget Sound."

Japan's Hakone Open-Air Park and Norway's Ekeberg Park were also included on the Artsy list, which you can read in its entirety here. Find out about more events and exhibits coming up at Seattle Art Museum here, and at Olympic Sculpture Park here.