Mid-Summer Fun Guide: Grounds for Sculpture
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
We've already seen Marilyn Monroe's underwear when she put her buns in the breeze over that subway grate in The Seven Year Itch. Maybe that's why her 26-foot-tall statue at Grounds for Sculpture leaves little to the imagination when it comes to her sculpted skivvies.
$15 | 36 miles/40 min. away | Grounds for Sculpture, 18 Fairgrounds Rd., Hamilton, N.J., 609-586-0616, groundsforsculpture.org.
We’ve already seen Marilyn Monroe’s underwear when she put her buns in the breeze over that subway grate in The Seven Year Itch. Maybe that’s why her 26-foot-tall statue at Grounds for Sculpture leaves little to the imagination when it comes to her sculpted skivvies. But the young nurse made famous by that V-J Day Times Square kiss photo? She’s actually clutching her skirt in the shot, to keep her dress from flying up as some rando sailor grabs her for a makeout session. So that’s why the underside of her 25-foot-tall statue is all smoothed over, protecting her modesty.
Upskirt angles on giant statues — that’s the kind of thing you think about when you’re taking shelter beneath them after traipsing through a sculpture garden on a hot summer day.
The brainchild and fantasyland of sculptor and philanthropist Seward Johnson, GFS has been open to the public on the site of the former New Jersey State Fairgrounds since 1992. Part exhibition of large-scale installations, part art gallery and part trip through the Uncanny Valley — so many of Johnson’s sculptures are life-size, lifelike “people” scattered throughout the park, sitting on benches reading the paper, reclining in the shade; there were many moments where it wasn’t clear if it was a real person in the distance we were gawking at — the best thing about GFS is its broad appeal.
There’s some kooky abstract stuff (Dana Stewart’s bronze creatures, with their two heads, weirdly long tails and enormous jaws look like things out of Beetlejuice), but there are also lovely areas where you can appreciate such things as a perfectly smooth carved piece of sandstone nestled in a reflecting pool, or a lotus garden, or live wild peacocks.
Johnson and other sculptors have based many of the GFS pieces off of famous paintings. There are huge, three-dimensional versions of Grant Wood’s American Gothic, Henri Matisse’s Dance (I) and Henri Rousseau’s The Dream, plus a walk-in version of Vincent Van Gogh’s bedroom and a somewhat wanting replication of Edvard Munch’s The Scream (expressing “Eh, this sort of sucks” more than genuine horror).
The Johnson retrospective, on view through Sept. 21, features the giant Marilyn (Forever Marilyn), the smoochers (Unconditional Surrender) and one of the most arresting pieces, The Awakening, an aluminum behemoth struggling to break free from beneath the soil. He’s out in “The Meadow” section of the sprawling campus, where the largest sculptures are.
“I want my work to disappear into the landscape and then take a viewer by surprise,” Johnson once told the New York Times. With their beauty and their startling familiarity, so many of his sculptures do just that. Though we’d prefer if the 25-foot-tall Abraham Lincoln not sneak up and take us by surprise. It’s weird enough stumbling onto him as it is.
