Realizing an American Dream

Sol LeWitt Louise Bourgeois Deborah Butterfield Ellsworth Kelly Anthony Caro Scott Burton Barry Flanagan Gary Hume

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Another is John and Mary Pappajohn.

Collectors and philanthropists who have served on the boards of such prestigious national institutions as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., the Whitney Museum for American Art in New York, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Pappajohns, who describe themselves as “embodying the American dream,” have remained steadfastly devoted to improving education and cultural offerings in Des Moines.

Besides founding several entrepreneurship centers, a scholarship fund, and a higher education center in the area, the art-loving couple — a repeat presence on ARTnews’s top 200 collectors list — have long served the Des Moines Art Center as trustees and donors.

In 2007, John, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur whose family immigrated to the area from Greece when he was a baby, approached Jeff Fleming, the center's director, with a proposal: How about he donate his outdoor sculpture collection to the Art Center? The works could be placed in a new sculpture park built for the purpose within the existing Western Gateway Park.

The city agreed, $6.1 million in funding was collaboratively raised by the center and the city, and the project was a go.

“This is their home,” says Fleming. “And I think they wanted to share their collection with the community in a way that it’s free and accessible to everyone. And they certainly accomplished that.”

The design for the 4.4-acre sculpture park was commissioned from New York architects Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas, who developed a master plan for the city of Des Moines in the early 1990s. Out of Western Gateway Park’s rolling landscape they created crescent-shaped cutaways that frame the 24 sculptures currently installed and break up the grounds into “rooms” that allow the works to speak to one another: a Louise Bourgeois Spider (1997) with Deborah Butterfield horses and Barry Flanagan’s Thinker on a Rock (1997), all figurative bronzes; Gary Hume "Snowmen" with Scott Burton’s table and chairs, all pared down to simplest geometric forms.

The park stands out not just for the quality of the work it includes — in addition to the artists mentioned above, the 24 sculptures include examples from such top artists as Anthony Caro, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol Lewitt, Richard Serra, and Tony Smith — but for the opportunity it offers to see such quality work, free of charge, in an urban environment.

The park officially opens this Sunday, Sept. 27, but “the fences came down yesterday,” Fleming said when he spoke with ARTINFO on Wednesday, “and the rush of people into the park was absolutely astonishing. It’s going to be all walks of the life, the whole gamut. Which is one of the most rewarding and exciting things about it.”

Fleming, who oversaw the arrangement in the space, joined the museum as a curator in 1999 and was appointed director in 2005. Click on the photo gallery at left to see what he had to say about some of the works in the park.