History
The park was founded in 1968 by a property grant in the will of Matilda C. Laumeier, and was originally intended as a memorial to her deceased husband, Henry H. Laumeier. The will gave their land and country house to the county, and specified that would be used for passive purposes (e.g., no sport fields). The park was 76 acres (0.31 km2) at its opening in 1975, but did not attract many visitors until a year later, when St. Louis sculptor Ernest Trova donated about 40 pieces of his work to the park. It soon became a popular tourist attraction, and received an additional 20 acres (0.081 km2) from the Friends of Laumeier. The additional land was mostly woods and is for site-specific sculptures, including the Old Orchard Swimming Pool, now also transformed into a large sculpture.
In July 2009, it was announced that Marilu Knode would replace Glen Gentele, who had accepted a position at another museum, as the executive director of the park. She began her tenure in September 2009. Knode was the former head of research at Future Arts Research at Arizona State University. Gentele, who had been the park's director since 2001, replaced Beej Nierengarten-Smith, who had resigned due to a longtime controversy about her management of the park.
Read more about this topic: Laumeier Sculpture Park
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Don’t give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can’t express them. Don’t analyse yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)