Art Omi: A Kid-Friendly Sculpture Park Near Hudson, NY
If you love Storm King, you must put Art Omi on your upstate bucket list. Art Omi is a 120-acre sculpture park, so it’s less sprawling than the 500-acre Storm King. It’s only 20 minutes from Hudson, and it’s a must-visit if you’re traveling with kids.
Take a virtual tour of Art Omi here, as you scroll through our photos of the colorful, larger-than-life sculptures (with 9-year-old Archer and 6-year-old Ramona for scale and links to more info on each piece). Then plan out your trip with a little help from a story I wrote for the Upstate Alliance for the Creative Economy.
Above, the kids are having a moment in Beverly Pepper’s Paraclete, and below, they’re jumping for joy before Olaf Breuning’s Clouds.
Olaf Breuning’s Clouds greets visitors entering Art Omi.
Atelier Van Lieshout’s Blast Furnace, a 40-foot-tall steel and wood structure, looks like it would be so much fun to climb, though the signs ask visitors to not to.
One of the kids’ favorite pieces was Will Ryman’s Pac-Lab, a brightly colored maze that made them feel like they were in a real-life old-school video-game.
I don’t think you’re supposed to touch the art at Art Omi, but Ramona couldn’t resist hugging Will Ryman’s Pac-Lab.
Ramona reminded me of a little bumblebee in a groovy honeycomb hive as she stood beside DeWitt Godfrey’s Picker Sculpture.
DeWitt Godfrey’s Picker Sculpture is no longer on exhibit at Art Omi, where new art is always arriving.
The Art Omi site says, “Mary Ann Unger was known for her large scale works evoking the body, bandaging, flesh and bone.” I loved seeing the soft lines of this sculpture, Misericordia, against the angles of the winter woods, and I suppose Ramona wasn’t too off-base when we came upon in the woods and she squealed, “Ooh! Is that a butt?!” Here she is, between the buns, really feeling the majesty of the piece through the candy-pink fleece of her tiny gloves.
Mary Ann Unger’s Misericordia feels like a secret, sacral power-center in the woods.
Some of the sculptures at Art Omi welcome human touch, and others are supposed to be off-limits. There is an “explore map” of the interactive exhibits, but it can be hard to keep an eye on the map, especially with gloved hands on a blustery day. My rule-follower, Archer, was very annoyed with the folks using Atelier Van Lieshout’s Blast Furnace as a jungle gym when the sign clearly said not to climb or touch this piece. This was Archer’s favorite exhibit, and I think he secretly wished to climb it, too.
My favorite moment of the entire trip was when Ramona posed beside Bianca Beck’s Untitled, mimicking the iconic fierceness of this fluorescent-colored sculpture. Later on, I read Art Omi’s description of this piece and loved that my artistic 6-year-old didn’t need to read about it to understand it: “This work evokes a single colossal figure, as though the human scale has been psychically amplified by its potential, love, pride, and power to connect.”
Bianca Beck’s Untitled seemed like a 3-D portrait of the big, bold spirit of our fierce little Ramona.
To give you a sense of the spacing between the exhibits, I included a photo below of my husband, Pete, and Ramona walk between Bernar Venet’s Arcs in Disorder and Brian Tolle’s Eureka.
Bernar Venet’s Arcs in Disorder (in the foreground) and Brian Tolle’s Eureka (in the background).
For even more Art Omi, click through the photo below:
