Construction season comes to the Anderson Sculpture Garden

If you've walked past Beardshear Hall lately, you've noticed the fencing. It's not going away anytime soon, and part of it extends into the Anderson Sculpture Garden. 

Iowa State University is replacing utility infrastructure along the west side of Beardshear Hall this spring and summer, with a roof replacement project beginning in mid-April. The west entrance to Beardshear has closed until early August; the east, south and north doors remain accessible. Full project details are available from Inside Iowa State.

The lawn between Beardshear and the Hub, including a portion of the Anderson Sculpture Garden, is fenced off to give crews and large trucks access to the work area. Most sculptures were positioned outside the construction zone, but all of them in the area have been wrapped, boxed or surrounded with protective barriers. Moving everything wasn't an option. "There are too many large works of art to move them all," Lynette Pohlman said.

We're grateful to Facilities Planning and Management for their care in covering the sculptures and coordinating with us through this process.

Pedestrians can still cross the library quadrangle lawn using the east-west sidewalks immediately north of Carver Hall and immediately south of Morrill Hall and the Hub, near entrances to the Christian Petersen Art Museum. Sidewalks between those two routes are at least partially closed until early August.

Sculptures currently covered or boxed are Bighorn, Hive Mind, Jack Trice, Kabuki, and Ghost Trees

A New Garden Takes Root

Something quieter has been happening in the Anderson Sculpture Garden. The A Moment in Time New Perennial Movement Sample Garden, now nearly a year old, was designed by Austin Eischeid (American, ISU '11).

The bed is planted with more than 1,200 perennials and 5,000 bulbs, chosen to hold structure and interest across every season. Eischeid trained under Piet Oudolf (Dutch, b. 1944), the designer behind the High Line and Lurie Gardens, and has spent over a decade collaborating with him on naturalistic gardens around the world.

It's a small-scale preview of something much larger. Eischeid has designed a full expansion plan for the sculpture garden: roughly 21,000 square feet of new planting in two phases over the next two years.