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
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)