Moore in America : monumental sculpture at the New York Botanical Garden (2008): Home

Welcome

I am very pleased to welcome you to Moore in America: Monumental Sculpture at The New York Botanical Garden, the largest outdoor exhibition of Henry Moore's sculpture ever presented in a single venue in the United States. We extend our appreciation
to the Henry Moore Foundation for its co-curation of the exhibition, which is underwritten by MetLife Foundation and travels to the Atlanta Botanical Garden in spring 2009.

The 20 colossal works displayed throughout The New York Botanical Garden provide for an impressive interaction of nature and art such as Moore envisioned. The beginnings of the Botanical Garden's enchanting landscape along the Bronx River, framed in forest and rock outcrops of varied topography, have a geological history shaped by natural forces. With a foundation of gneiss and schist, the river and marshland margins were a route and area of seasonal habitation for native peoples and European settlement. This ongoing relationship between nature and culture yielded the Garden landscape that became the palette for the form and complexity that exists today.

Henry Moore was raised in Yorkshire in the north of England, a pastiche of pasture and forest, of rolling hills and deep valleys. The interplay between the solid land forms and the void of sky must have made an indelible impression on him. Many of his larger works feel like landscapes themselves. Moore intended that his monumental works be presented in expansive settings so that their mass
and size could be seen from many angles, in great variety of light, and in differing seasons. The New York Botanical Garden fits his intent perfectly, offering sweeping, undulating terrain, diverse plant collections, and magnificent gardens with the appropriate scale and beauty to complement his sculpture, as captured through the lens of David Finn in this catalog.

The Botanical Garden has been a premier cultural, research, and education institution since its founding in the early 1890s. In those formative years, this particular site was chosen because of the natural features, beauty, and diversity of its landscape. Today, the sculpture across the Garden once again focuses attention on the dramatic landscape and provides a perfect seasonal complement to the unparalleled year-round flower shows in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, America's preeminent Victorian-style glasshouse.

I hope that visitors will experience a newly found appreciation for Henry Moore's sculpture and The New York Botanical Garden. When viewed together, both are transformed.

Gregory Long
President and CEO
The New York Botanical Garden