Sculpture Park & Plaza

Connie Kimberly Sculpture Park and the Tony & Cathie Hancy Sculpture Plaza

At the establishment of Heide as a public park and museum in 1981, the concept of a sculpture park was given priority by Heide's Trustees and the museum's inaugural director Maudie Palmer. Displaying sculptures throughout the park would take full advantage of the museum’s unique location within the landscape. As the founding chairman of Heide Norman Wettenhall wrote: ‘The landscape is an integral part of Heide and most important in its ethos. It provides the opportunity and responsibility to develop a gallery in a setting, the like of which is rare anywhere in the world'.

In 1981, two outdoor works placed within the grounds by John and Sunday Reed provided a starting point for the development of the sculpture park: Ron Upton's Three Forms (1964) and David Tolley's Man/Woman (c.1966). The main focus for the park remained on sculpture by Australian artists but with the selective inclusion of significant works by international artists, such as the American artist Dennis Oppenheim, whose maquette for Basket and Wave (From Dreams and Nightmares. Journey of a Broken Weave) was commissioned in 1984. Inge King's Rings of Saturn (2006) was installed at the opening of the redeveloped museum in 2006, and in the same year the park was named the Connie Kimberly Sculpture Park. Today it comprises over thirty sculptures, including those in the Tony & Cathie Hancy Sculpture Plaza at the museum’s forecourt.

Heide has commissioned two artist’s gardens. Karakarook’s Garden (2005-06) by Lauren Berkowitz containing rare indigenous plants is located near the Heide I oak tree. Fiona Hall’s native rockery garden is the most recent addition to the sculpture park, featuring an experimental espalier of three Silver Princess trees (Eucalyptus caesia) across the Heide III building façade.