Moving Out: David Smith & The Outdoor Migration of Sculpture

David Smith is widely hailed as the first American artist to make welded metal sculptures and to absorb industrial methods and materials into his creative repertoire. Smith’s inventiveness and contributions to sculptural practice extend far beyond machine vernacular and technique, however. Indeed, many have traced the origins of modern sculpture parks to Smith’s outdoor installations in the fields of his property in Bolton Landing, in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. For Smith, nature was not only a source of inspiration but also served as a studio, accomplice, and staging ground for his complex sculptural works. The outward migration of Smith’s sculpture, and that of subsequent artists, will be the subject of this session. Marking 60 years since Smith’s untimely death, and on the heels of the Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park’s exhibition and catalogue, David Smith: The Nature of Sculpture, this forum seeks to explore the implications of Smith’s outdoor sculptural legacy. Of particular interest to this panel are submissions on related topics such as the development of Earthworks; nature as a creative collaborator and agent of sculptural completion; the increasingly uncontainable scale of modern and contemporary sculpture; the rise of sculpture parks and open-air installations; as well as more conceptual examinations of “outside” spaces for sculpture.