If you’re looking to reconnect with nature, to the extent that you might also have a snake wrap around your ankle, I highly recommend the Storm King Sculpture Park. It’s not exactly hidden: many of the sculptures tower over 90 feet, yet the park still feels underappreciated.
Storm King was established in 1960 after Ralph Ogden purchased the land, aiming to create a museum with small sculptures and paintings. Ogden also hoped to incorporate work from the nearby Hudson River Art School, but the park switched its trajectory in 1967 after it acquired 13 pieces from David Smith. A major milestone came in 1975 when Mark Di Suvero installed five enormous works, including Pyramidian, one of my favorites. Di Suvero began working on the massive sculpture in his studio in Long Island, but finished the project on-site in 1998 using a 60-foot beam to finalize the massive inverted structure. The Pyramidian can be seen from most of the grounds, rising above the horizon line and orienting you to the rest of the park.
While Di Suvero’s work serves as a man-made compliment to the landscape, many other pieces are built into the environment directly. My favorite piece was created by Maya Lin, and it’s called the Storm King Wavefield. Lin reshaped the soil to create ripples in the earth, each spanning over 300 feet long and 10-15 feet high with troughs in between. As someone who grew up mountain biking, I was instantly inclined to grab a bike and use it as a pump track, but unfortunately others before me had the same idea and there were about one million signs prohibiting this. The site provides bikes though, so I don’t really know what they were expecting. Anyway, back to the art.
The park’s true charm lies in how it invites you to witness the creation process. The entire time I was wondering how it was possible to create things at this scale, and the logistics that must have gone into manipulating the natural landscape. Andy Goldsworthy’s wall is a perfect example of this, as it sparked a very heated discussion about whether or not the wall continued underwater or just appeared to (it does fully continue). The wall was actually supposed to stop at the water, as it already spanned 750 feet long, wrapping around trees and sculptures, but Goldworthy felt that it was only natural for it to continue past the pond. When it was finished, the wall went on for an impressive 2,278 feet. The stones were gathered directly from the site, as Goldsworthy found an abandoned farm wall on the edge of the grounds.
Visiting this park was akin to hiking through an art museum. You get all the endorphins from walking around in nature, with the added benefit of seeing art that’s unlike anything else. It puts everything into perspective, and makes you feel insignificant in a way that is so freeing. It’s only 45 minutes away from Vassar, so if you’re looking for a day trip, I highly recommend it.