Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park


Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park is a botanical garden, art museum, and outdoor sculpture park located in Grand Rapids Township, Michigan, United States. Opened in 1995, Meijer Gardens quickly established itself in the Midwest as a major cultural attraction jointly focused on horticulture and sculpture.
Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park includes a large tropical conservatory, an 8-acre Japanese garden, major works of modern and contemporary sculpture on the grounds and indoors, along with a series of outdoor gardens and nature trails.
It is a well attended cultural site in Michigan, having attracted 750,000 visitors annually between 2015 - 2017. Meijer Gardens has continued to grow their permanent collection of sculpture from major figures in Modern and Contemporary art while building additional structures for indoor and outdoor gardens. In 2018, the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park was included as one of "Eleven of the World's Greatest Sculpture Parks" by Artsy.

History

In the early 1980s, the West Michigan Horticultural Society, a non-profit organization in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was searching for a nearby site in order to establish a botanical garden and conservatory.
As early as 1986, a member of the Horticultural Society approached Frederik Meijer,, to request the donation of a parcel of land. The site, which contained a stream and wetland areas, had originally been earmarked by Meijer for the construction of a new superstore. However, an alternative location for the store was found, allowing the more environmentally sensitive lands to be used for the public garden.
In January 1991, Meijer, Inc. donated of land in Grand Rapids Township, Michigan to establish the new public garden. A $13 million capital campaign to develop the land into a public park was lead by Earl Holton and additional support was provided by the Meijer Corporation’s vendors. By 1993, Frederik Meijer and fellow Grand Rapids environmental philanthropist Peter Wege of Steelcase were walking the grounds of the early park, then known as the Michigan Botanic Garden, and making plans for the nature trail.
Frederik and Lena Meijer, of the Meijer Corporation, were instrumental in supporting the development of the project through the donation of land, financing, and by providing their sculpture collection to the park. Renamed the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in their honor, the museum is commonly known as Meijer Gardens.
The Gardens provided an outlet for Fred Meijer's growing collection of large-scale sculpture from Marshall Fredericks and for Lena Meijer's love of plants and flowers. Meijer Gardens first opened to the public on April 20, 1995. The mission of the Gardens is to equally emphasize sculpture and horticulture, in honor of Frederik Meijer's objective of uniting fine art and the visual beauty of nature.
In its first 25 years of operation, Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park has attracted more than 13 million visitors.

Horticulture

Conservatory

A key feature of Gardens is the Lena Meijer Conservatory, a five-story, facility that supports tropical plants from around the world. With rock landscapes by designer Philip diGiacomo and plant selections by garden designer Stephen Rosselet, the conservatory houses diverse tropical plants, including coconut palms from the Pacific, fig trees from India, exotic orchids from Central and South America, and Asiatic bamboo and banana trees. Additional indoor gardens include a carnivorous plant house, an arid house for cacti and desert vegetation, and an area with a Victorian theme.

Japanese Garden

Opened on June 10, 2015, the 8-acre Richard and Helen DeVos Japanese Garden furthers the organization’s dual mission of horticulture and sculpture. In one of the most revered horticultural styles internationally, the Japanese Garden is in the northeast corner of the 132-acre property and demonstrates the essence of the Japanese tradition of tranquility, simplicity, and beauty. The design re-imagined pre-existing features of the land: water, variation in elevation, and quietude; by a combination of cultivated and naturalistic areas.
The design by Hoichi Kurisu, president and founder of Kurisu International, Inc., reflects this essence through a variety of horticultural elements, including zen-style and bonsai gardens, scenic bridges, waterfalls, and a tea house. Kurisu's garden contains several contemporary sculptures by major international artists selected especially for the location. The Japanese Garden includes a ten-foot work in granite by respected contemporary artist Anish Kapoor.

Nature trail

The Wege Nature Trail, a paved path that winds through a forested section of the property, aims to promote awareness of the various native ecosystems of West Michigan. It is connected to the Frey Boardwalk which leads to the natural wetlands. The trail provides sites for bird watching, areas of natural prairie and wetlands with a tadpole pond.

Woodland Shade garden

The Gwen Frostic Woodland Shade Garden, dedicated in June 1998, commemorates the influence of Gwen Frostic, a life-long Michigan resident, artist, author and businesswoman known for her naturalistic block prints of local flora and fauna. The garden features woodland plants including ferns, hostas, bleeding hearts, rhododendrons, and azaleas.

Children's Garden

The Lena Meijer Children’s Garden opened in June 2004 and is one of the largest children’s gardens in the nation. This garden is a unique creation of an enchanted world of plants, gardens, sculpture, and nature, including creative and interactive areas, on. Woodland tree houses and a log cabin, an interactive water garden, a butterfly maze, a sensory garden, and many other elements are featured within this most enchanting of children’s gardens in the Midwest.

Other features

In 2003, two additional aspects of the garden were completed and opened to the public. The Michigan Farm Garden, with heirloom vegetables, orchards, and figurative animal sculptures, provides families with the opportunity to experience the context of a 1930s farm complete with a 100 year old barn and replica farmhouse from Lena Meijer’s childhood, and the Frederik Meijer Gardens Amphitheater, an outdoor musical and theatrical venue with a covered stage and tiered lawn seating for 1,900 persons. Past musicians featured in the Amphitheater include Harry Connick Jr., B.B. King, Sheryl Crow, the Steve Miller Band, and Wynton Marsalis.
The outdoor gardens, by landscape designer James van Sweden of Washington, D.C., and garden designer Penelope Hobhouse of Sussex, England, feature four-season plantings. In September 1997 the Leslie E. Tassell English Perennial & Bulb Garden and the New American Garden were dedicated.
As part of the educational mission of the Gardens, the Peter M. Wege Library has reference books and periodicals on horticulture and sculpture.

Sculpture

Meijer Gardens includes a outdoor sculptural park, which opened on May 16, 2002.
The museum has exhibited the work of world renowned artists including Jonathan Borofsky, Alexander Calder, Tony Smith, Anthony Caro, Antony Gormley, Mark di Suvero, Anish Kapoor, Jenny Holzer, Richard Hunt, Joan Miró, David Nash, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Keith Haring, Laura Ford, and Kenneth Snelson, among others.

Permanent collection

Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park primarily collects the work of sculptors. It also contains drawings, provided they were created by artists who identify as sculptors. As of May 2015, the permanent collection contained over 300 artworks. It features works by prominent British and American sculptors including Claes Oldenburg, Louise Bourgeois, Richard Serra, Barbara Hepworth, and Henry Moore, in addition to major works by the international artists Coosje van Bruggen, Ai Weiwei, Beverly Pepper, and Jaume Plensa.
Fred and Lena Meijer purchased a second work by glass artist Dale Chihuly in 2009 as an addition to the permanent collection.
In 2016, the museum acquired the archives of sculptor Beverly Pepper, over 900 works on paper. Following the museum's acquisition of Iron Tree by Ai Weiwei, a major exhibition of his work was held at the Gardens in 2017.
The collection contains numerous outdoor monumental sculptures throughout the property and also indoors in the conservatory, specialty gardens, and gallery. Among the many highlights for visitors is The American Horse, sculpted by Nina Akamu as a homage to the original commission to Leonardo da Vinci of the Duke of Milan, as well as works by Auguste Rodin and Degas in the Victorian Conservatory.

Temporary exhibitions

The Sculpture Program of the Gardens features three temporary exhibitions annually. Featured exhibitions have included works by Andy Goldsworthy, Tom Otterness, Magdalena Abakanowicz, and George Rickey.

Seasonal events

Meijer Gardens supports two large seasonal exhibition events, both started in 1995 when the facility first opened: The Fred & Dorothy Fichter Butterflies Are Blooming, and Christmas and Holiday Traditions Around the World.
Butterflies Are Blooming is held annually in the Lena Meijer Conservatory from March 1 through April 30; it is one of the largest temporary butterfly exhibits in the nation, with thousands of tropical butterflies from Central America, South America, and Asia. The butterfly exhibit is well attended and popular with visitors of all ages.
Christmas and Holiday Traditions around the World takes place from November through the first week of January. The Gardens annual event includes the display of holiday items and symbols of more than 40 nations and cultures. In 2012, the event reportedly offered "horse-drawn carriage rides" through the "candle-lit sculpture park".

Gallery

Management

David Hooker serves as president and CEO at Meijer Gardens.
In July 2019, the Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park announced the hire of Jochen Wierich as the Curator of Sculpture and Exhibitions. Wierlich was jointly appointed as curator at Meijer Gardens and as the Lena E. S. Meijer professor in art history at Aquinas College. He was preceded by Joseph Becherer.

Architecture

The Lena Meijer Conservatory was designed by Cox, Medendorp and Olson, and utilizes galvanized steel for the frame construction.
In May 2019, the New York partners Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects were selected to re-envision and expand the facilities at Meijer Gardens, with the assistance of local partners Progressive AE and Owen-Ames-Kimball Co.