Page 52 - BSAM 2015 Q3

AN EXHIBIT OF ART
Bonsai at the Lynden Sculpture Garden
By Jack Douthitt, USA Photographs by Kyle Talbott
Top right; The view as you approach the main building, with Bernhard Heiliger’s “Vegetative Sculpture I” (1959) in the foreground.
Bottom right; A shimpaku juniper against the lacy foliage of trees in the landscape.
In 1926 a Milwaukee Industrialist, Harry Bradley, married Peg and they bought a farm several miles outside the city. They brought in a landscape firm
to design a park like setting around their dream home and in the 1950s they started buying sculpture for the landscape. Over the years they collected more than fifty pieces of monumental sculpture. Many different artists are represented in the collection including Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Alexander Liberman, and Isamu Noguchi. Five years ago the property opened to the public as The Lynden Sculpture Garden (LSG). Their website can be found at
When LSG was planning their Fifth Anniversary Celebration as a public facility, they asked the local bonsai community to stage a bonsai exhibit as a part of the festivities. Several bonsai exhibitions and work- shops have been previously held at LSG, but never in
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conjunction with one of their large events. Their offer was readily accepted and a team led by Michelle Zim- mer went to work.
The central goal of the bonsai exhibit team was to insert the bonsai into the existing environment in the same manner as the other pieces of sculpture. They wanted to exhibit each bonsai in a manner that was sensitive to its surroundings and in harmony with the art that is already there. A large terrace immediately outside the main building already contained several