Grounds For Sculpture

You Know What's Beautiful? Art and the Outdoors

Grounds For Sculpture in Hamilton offers both.

Welcome to the first weekend of Daylight Savings Time. What will you be doing with your extra sunlight hour, especially considering the weather is beginning to cooperate with us?

You'd probably like to be able to check out a place that has impressive views, art and culture, and provides room for everyone to roam - but you really don't want to be indoors and waste that sunlight.

Grounds For Sculpture, located at 126 Sculptor's Way in Hamilton Township, makes for an uncompromising compromise. It offers a vast collection of sculpture and architectural elements set in the middle of acres of manicured property. The artwork and the surrounding landscaping come together in a unique and carefully created environment, each element supporting each other to provide an art gallery that is also a park.

Opened in 1992, the attraction has become a destination spot not only for New Jerseyans, but for people from neighboring Pennsylvania and New York (via the New Jersey Turnpike).

Grounds For Sculpture was initiated by sculptor and philanthropist J. Seward Johnson in 1984, with construction beginning in 1989 on what was once the New Jersey Fairgrounds. It has since expanded from an ambitious gallery-garden into a grouping of more than 250 pieces from a wide variety of artists including Kiki Smith, Anthony Caro and New Jersey artist George Segal. Grounds For Sculpture became a not-for-profit organization in 2000.

Saturday, March 12, finds the facility as host for the New Jersey Festival of Electronic Arts from 1 to 8 p.m. Video, electronic music and light displays will all be a part of the event.

That attraction and others are why we've chosen Grounds For Sculpture for this installment of Day Tripper, a weekly look at places out of town, but in reach, and worth the drive.