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Sculpture Park

Students lay on the grass around the sculptures of Pratt's Sculpture Park.

Pratt Institute’s Sculpture Park, one of the largest in New York City, stretches across the 25-acre Brooklyn campus. The Institute’s lush, green lawns and historic buildings provide an excellent backdrop for more than 70 sculptures. The exhibition is a revolving and evolving one, with most of the work remaining on the campus for several years. Well-­known and emerging artists, faculty, and graduates kindly loan their work to the exhibition, and the park includes a number of commissioned works as well.   

Sculpture Park Guide
  • Mark Di Suvero's Paintbrush. In 2015, Mark di Suvero began working on a series of sculptures that draw inspiration from the cut-outs of the French artist, Henri Matisse. One of these sculpture is Paintbrush. The playful potential for imminent change contained in its bowing curvilinear structure recalls the mutable paper and thumbtacks used by Matisse for continuous alterations.
  • Santiago Calatrava's S7. Pratt Institute is proud to announce a new exhibition of the world-renowned artist, architect, and engineer Santiago Calatrava. This work, titled S7 was a part of seven monumental sculptures installed along the median of Park Avenue in New York City in 2015. The artist’s name has been most closely associated with his celebrated architectural designs of bridges and transportation centers built throughout the world, including the “Oculus” World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York completed in 2016. Additionally, he has exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2005), The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (2012), and the Vatican Museum in Rome (2013). In reference to this series of prodigious sculptures Calatrava said “their relation to the natural world suggests a link between man and nature, implying the sculptures are found objects in a human forest.” Calatrava received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from Pratt Institute in 2012, conferred in recognition of his achievements as an architect, artist, and engineer.
  • Sandy Macleoud's Uplifting. Uplifting consists of found architectural and industrial objects, giving a voice to the remnants of urban landscapes that were once an integral part of our environment and economic world, but are now abandoned in the wasteland of industry. Heavy with their own histories and references, the repurposed contemporary composition of these otherwise seemingly useless pieces evokes a new appreciation of their strong aesthetic qualities.
  • Ilan Averbuch's The Book of Stone and Steel. Much of Averbuch’s work starts in books—ideas, images, and literal references that end up as sculptures. This work represents his relationship to books—the artist’s subjective intellectual heritage and ambivalence.
  • Kenneth Snelson's Black EC Tower. The sculpture Black E.C. Tower belongs to a class of structures called “tensegrity,” first invented by Snelson in 1948. Tensegrity structures are composed of a network of taut tension wires enclosing an assembly of internal compression struts. Many of Snelson’s sculptures can be seen in public places and museums throughout the world. (Loan: Courtesy of Marlborough Gallery)
  • Grace Knowlton's 6 Copper Spheres. Knowlton has been creating spherical combines for many years. Her extensive studio grounds in Rockland County are covered with large panoplies of these forms in various clusters. The base materials vary: clay, cement, metal, collage, found objects, each sphere with its own individualized nature, but acting in unison.
  • Beverly Pepper's Double Sbalzo. Double Sbalzo (the direct English translation is “jump”) is used here by the artist as a term applied to a metal process for armor and other metal objects when one metal is layered on another. This technique is mirrored in the second plane of the multi-leveled curve of this sculpture. Pepper has completed many large-scale commissions in the United States and abroad of indoor and outdoor installations. She studied at Pratt Institute in 1942.
  • Leo Smith's Triangle. In minimal but lyrical terms, Smith has created a tenuous triangle delicately balanced on two metal balls. The triangle almost disappears in the landscape; it seems to float freely.
  • Philip Grausman's Leucantha. Over the past 30 years, Grausman has been working on a series of monumental heads. These works are not portraits in any conventional sense, although they emanate from proportional studies of individuals. Rather, these heads suggest landscapes, an association expressed through a shared sense of scale.
  • David Henderson's Skylark. Skylark has certain artistic precedents in oversized pop art monuments, but here the non-referential aspect of the piece allows us to enjoy the gracious curved surfaces with semi-opalescent light. Held, seemingly tenuous on the curve of the tree, it has a bird-like lift, as referred to in its title. The clever engineering takes us from one full volume to an attenuated shaft . . . and then to another blossoming form above.
  • Wendy Klmeperer's Lions at the Gate. The pervading imagery of Klemperer's work reflects a lifelong fascination with animals. Her large-scale sculptures are often constructed from salvaged industrial refuse ravaged by demolition, transformed to contain energy and new life. The welding process is reminiscent of a gesture drawing—the skeletal, steel lines contain both presence and absence. The body language of these animals expresses a feeling or state of being, with motion conveying emotion. Lions at the Gate references heraldic lions, from medieval times back to the lion gate of Mycenae.