Wichita State will add its 81st outdoor sculpture to the campus this summer

I remember when I realized I was walking through an art collection every day at work and hadn’t even noticed.

I was briefly employed at Wichita State University in the late 1990s and our department spent an afternoon on a guided tour of the campus’ outdoor sculpture collection. I suspect I wasn’t the only one — then or now — who regularly walked across campus and either didn’t pay attention or took for granted how much art I was passing.

Add to that the Wichitans or out-of-town visitors without a need to go on campus, and I feel safe in calling the collection one of Wichita’s underappreciated attractions. The art world, though, is aware of the Martin H. Bush Outdoor Sculpture Collection because of the quantity and quality of the pieces.

Public Art Review magazine included WSU on its list of the top 10 campus outdoor art collections nationwide in 2006, and it’s not unusual for well-traveled art admirers to make the trek to Wichita just to see “Personnages Oiseaux,” the largest of four U.S.-installed murals by Spanish surrealist Joan Miró.

If you’ve not explored the collection, you’re missing out on one of the city’s best free experiences. If you haven’t visited for a while, Wichita State added three sculptures in 2019 and plans to install the 81st piece in August.

The collection is part of WSU’s Ulrich Museum of Art, and while the galleries inside the museum plan to remain closed until at least January 2021, the majority of the sculptures are available to see anytime (there are a few on an outdoor terrace of the museum that can only be reached from inside the building).

Assembling works from prominent artists

The outdoor sculpture collection is named for the founding director of the Ulrich Museum of Art. Bush came to Wichita from New York in 1970 and opened the Ulrich in December 1974. He used his East Coast connections to bring works by prominent artists to the Midwest, and among one of the first was the 28 foot by 52 foot Miró mosaic installed in 1978. It is still considered the most famous acquisition among the assembly.

Then WSU president Clark Ahlberg had challenged Bush to commission a piece from an acclaimed artist for the entire southern-exterior wall of the McKnight Art Center, which houses the museum and is visible from what was then the school’s main entrance. Miró created 11 murals between 1937 and 1980 and “Personnages Oiseaux,” or “Bird People,” is his only predominately glass mosaic.

The outdoor installations are part of the museum’s entire collection and like any other work added to the permanent collection, there is a protocol to follow before commissioning the work or purchasing a piece. Acquisitions are made through private funding, endowments and grants.

“There is no schedule or goal of so many per year,” said Leslie Brothers, director of the Ulrich Museum of Art since 2018. “The way a piece comes into the collection has to do first and foremost with whether it fits into the collection.”

The museum follows a mission statement for the outdoor sculpture collection that allows for abstract and figurative pieces in a range of mediums.

“Since its inception, the main focus of the collection has been on representing work by established artists widely acknowledged to have made significant contributions to outdoor sculpture internationally,” Brothers said.

Standards for new works entering the collection, she added, are measured by the excellence of works currently in the collection. Beyond Miró, the most prominent are works by Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore, Louise Nevelson, Claes Oldenburg, Fernando Botero and Scott Burton.

Three new sculptures installed in 2019

Among the three additions in 2019 were two site-specific commissioned pieces and one purchase of a pre-existing sculpture.

“Shockers” is the second installation in the collection by Tom Otterness, a Wichita native who has spent most of his career in New York and is considered one of the most prolific public sculptors. His bronze “Millipede” is just across from the McKnight Art Center in a tulip bed, crawling toward the Miró mosaic.

The newest work features two 19-foot-tall figures made of steel and hay taking a break from work as they stand side by side looking over a small field of real hay bales. The style is similar to a traveling large-scale sculpture by Otterness that spent 2015 to 2017 on campus.

While “Shockers” might look familiar, it is a new piece commissioned by the children of Joan S. Beren, an alum of the school who served on the WSU Board of Trustees and chaired the Ulrich Museum of Art’s Outdoor Sculpture Committee for several years. She bequeathed more than $1 million to the university to create an outdoor sculpture conservation fund before her passing in 2016.

“The Celestial Mechanic” by Randy Regier, who had a studio in Wichita earlier this decade but now works in Kansas City, stands out among the collection because it’s laying down. The sculpture is in the form of an empty space suit and is made from found materials collected during the artist’s travels in central Kansas. It’s partially buried in soil and laying in a container with a tempered glass cover.

Elyn Zimmerman, who has lived in New York City since 1977, completed “Font” in 1993. It is a polished black granite disk on top of an altar with water flowing over the disk. It’s placed just off a busy walkway and in front of a residence hall, encouraging interaction with passersby or those looking for a meditative spot.

Zimmerman is just the ninth female artist to contribute to the outdoor sculptures at WSU; overall artists represented in the Ulrich’s permanent collection are 84% male and 95% Caucasian. Brothers said diversification is a focus for her.

“The museum must seek to bring better balance to the collection and more comprehensively represent through its collection the diversity of ethnic and racial backgrounds in Wichita, Kansas, and the U.S.,” Brothers said.

Adding the 81st member of the collection in August

This summer, Wichita State plans to install “Twister Grande,” a commissioned work by Alice Aycock, the 2018 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in Contemporary Sculpture from the International Sculpture Center.

“Adding this work by Alice Aycock will celebrate the best that art has to offer in public space while also celebrating a woman artist who herself is a force of nature,” Brothers said.

The 13-foot-tall powder coated aluminum structure is part of her “Twister” series that uses computer-assisted design and a complex production process to seemingly capture the twirling of ever-moving wind and combines it with the imagery of dance. Museum staff has pegged Aug. 4 for the installation date, though they advised to watch Facebook and the museum website for any shifts to that plan.

The 81st sculpture in the outdoor collection will be the first piece on Wichita State’s Innovation Campus. It’ll be installed on a 2-foot-high mound at the campus roundabout near the east entrance off 17th street.

“At WSU, ‘Twister Grande’ will embody the spirit of former President John Bardo, reminding generations to come of the qualities he brought to campus as a leader: dynamism, adaptability, drive and the recognition of the need for change, all put in service of moving toward the future,” Brothers said.

Bardo died in March 2019 while president of Wichita State, where he championed the effort to create an area of campus to bring together companies and organizations with student talent, ideas and expertise.

Because of COVID-19 precautions, there will not be a dedication event as there was for the three unveilings in 2019. Anyone wanting to learn more about the artist’s sources of inspiration, creative experiments and technical ingenuity can visit the “Alice Aycock In the Studio” exhibition in the Ulrich’s Grafly Gallery starting July 1 and running through Dec. 6.

The museum won’t be open to the public so appointments are necessary by calling 316-978-3664.

Tour an ‘outstanding outdoor sculpture collection’

Guided tours are paused but you can take a self-guided tour using the Ulrich Museum of Art mobile app or downloading a map from the museum website. Or, a casual walk around the main paths on the 330-acre campus will take you by a majority of the works.

I visited several times this spring as I looked for more things to do while unable to travel and while keeping my distance from others during the pandemic. Sometimes I ride my bicycle through campus and stop when I want to read about a piece. I also downloaded the app and followed several of the tours. There are seven tours that break up the collection into areas; do one each visit or string them together to see the entirety.

I appreciated the app’s additional information about each artist and their inspiration for the specific work; it’s more than you can get from the small signs displayed at each sculpture. The app and the Ulrich’s new Collection Portal on its website, wichita.edu/museums/ulrich, are also great ways to take a virtual tour if you’re not able to visit in person.

“It is an outstanding outdoor sculpture collection,” said Brothers, who became the Ulrich’s director after 25 years working in university art museums, most recently at Youngstown State University in Ohio. “From an outsider like me, I was astonished to find it here. There are very, very few matches in North America for the quality and relevance of the artists selected over time.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the number of sculptures in the Martin H. Bush Outdoor Sculpture Collection.

This story was originally published June 26, 2020 at 5:01 AM.