NEW ORLEANS.- The new Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden at the New Orleans Museum of Art opens soon. A tremendous addition to the cultural life of New Orleans and Louisiana, the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden will serve the metropolitan and regional communities, and will offer the many visitors to the city an opportunity to enjoy a world-class collection of modern and contemporary sculpture. On completion, the Garden will be one of the premier sculpture gardens in America.

In March 2002, the New Orleans Museum of Art began construction for what will be one of the premier sculpture gardens in the United States. The new Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, adjacent to the Museum in City Park, will significantly, positively and permanently change the cultural landscape of New Orleans and the Gulf South.

What began more than a year ago as a crater-like hole in the ground has blossomed into an incredible garden—a garden of sculpture by major 20th-century European American, Israeli and Japanese artists.

The 7-acre garden will open with 48 sculptures by such artists as Antoine Bourdelle, Gaston Lachaise, William Zorach, Henry Moore, Jacques Lipchitz, Barbara Hepworth, Seymour Lipton, Arnaldo Pomodora, Kenneth Snelson, George Rickey, Elisabeth Frink, Masayuki Nagare, Lynn Chadwick, Louis Bourgeois, Tony Smith, George Segal, Deborah Butterfield, Allison Saar and Joel Shapiro. The sculptures, gifts from the Besthoff Foundation, combined with works from the Museum’s permanent collection, are valued in excess of $25 million. The sculptures will be installed in the Garden on a beautiful site amongst meandering footpaths, reflecting lagoons, Spanish moss-laden 200-year-old live oaks, mature pines, magnolias, camellias, and pedestrian bridges. There will be a gated main entrance and plaza flanked with two pavilions, located across Collins Diboll Circle, which surrounds the Museum building, at Dueling Oaks Drive. Secondary gated entrances will face City Park’s Casino and The Pavilion of the Two Sisters. The site, incorporating land and water, has been developed to accommodate a permanent collection of sculpture.

The architectural team who designed the Garden includes project architect Lee Ledbetter of Lee Ledbetter Architects, New Orleans, and the landscape architect Brian Sawyer of Sawyer/Berson, New York.

The Besthoff Sculpture Garden will be open to the public without charge, Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and is expected to attract 250,000 to 300,000 visitors annually. Area residents and tourists alike, serious art enthusiasts and new audiences all will be able to enjoy this world-class collection of modern and contemporary sculpture in an accessible, casual setting.

More than $10.1 million has been raised for the garden’s construction and operation, but sponsorship opportunities are still available for architectural elements and some sculpture installations. A tremendous addition to the cultural life of New Orleans and the region, the Garden is a collaborative project of the New Orleans Museum of Art, City Park, and the Besthoff Foundation.

The latest art destination in the country, the sculpture garden represents the culmination of years of planning and construction.