Garden Club visits the Nasher Sculpture Center

Members of the Sunnyvale Garden Club recently toured the Nasher Sculpture Center in downtown Dallas during National Garden Club Week. Vel Hawes, one of the architects of the Nasher, explained details of the architecture of the building and the challenges for the special trees, grass, and landscaping in the park.

The one and a half-acre sculpture garden features settings designed to frame outdoor works. More than 170 trees, including cedar elms, live oaks, crepe myrtles, weeping willows, and magnolias, together with stone pathways, pools, and fountains, define intimate landscapes for quiet reflection and contemplation of works, and create a verdant oasis in downtown Dallas.

The Nasher Sculpture Center contains both modern and contemporary sculpture, with the larger pieces set outside in the lush park. Situated in downtown Dallas at the base of the city’s skyline, the Nasher Sculpture Center represents Ray Nasher’s vision to create an outdoor “roofless” museum that will serve as a peaceful retreat for reflection of art and nature and a public home for his collection of 20th-century sculpture. Approximately 25 large-scale sculptures from the Nasher Collection will be on view in the garden at any one time.

Raymond Nasher (October 26, 1921 – March 16, 2007) was a Duke University alumnus (1943) who was an avid art collector. Together with his wife Patsy, he amassed a substantial number of the world’s greatest sculptures (including works by Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, Harry Bertoia, Henri Matisse and Henry Moore) and various other important pieces.

Nasher gave the lead gift for the creation of the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas and Duke University’s art museum, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, NC.

In the early 1960s, Nasher was responsible for founding NorthPark Center, the mall that is currently the largest in Texas and one of the five largest in the United States. At the time of its founding, it was the largest climate-controlled, indoor building in the world.

Sunnyvale Garden Club members understand that gardening is another form of art blending color and texture to achieve tranquil locales in their own backyards. For more information or to become a member, visit their website at www.sunnyvalegardenclub. org.

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