Last Friday we rounded out Joan’s birthday week in a delightful way. The “we” was a group of four. In addition to Joan and me there was our very dear friend Frank and our delightful granddaughter Lulu, recently returned from a term abroad at Cambridge University to begin her senior year at Barnard. Joan is a person who, in the gift category, prefers experiences above things, and she had expressed an interest in a visit to the Grounds for Sculpture, an outdoor museum improbably carved out of burgeoning suburbia on forty-some acres of brilliant green between Route 1 and I-295. The land is that on which in years gone by the New Jersey State Fair used to take place. Part of its border fronts on a small, narrow, clean and attractive lake. This surprising and improbably placed sculpture garden has changed dramatically since our last visit probably a decade ago.
Eighteenth-century London saw the rise of the urban “pleasure garden,” such as the famous Vauxhall Gardens, which developed from models developed by private aristocrats in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. These are the (far) distant ancestors of our theme parks. The Grounds for Sculpture owes its existence to the imagination, money, and political influence of Seward Johnson (1930-2020), a scion of the Big Pharma empire of the Johnson and Johnson Corporation, the Band Aid Kings, who was as well an ambitious sculptor. The Johnson and Johnson Corporation was (and is yet) a huge presence in New Brunswick, a small city just up the road. It is home to, among other things, Rutgers, the New Jersey state university. Seward Johnson, an artist himself, likewise had the vision (and resources) of an entrepreneur. Rodin he was not, perhaps, though several of his profusion of sculptural constructions are far more than just “interesting”. His vision of the possibilities of a permanent yet malleable site for the exhibition of “outdoor” art created a pleasure ground of genius. Seward Johnson’s own artistic atelier was prolific. His work was varied, but one common genre is quotidian life (a man seated on a bench while reading a newspaper, for example) inconspicuously sited and trompe l’oeil in effect. There are several such pieces in public places in Princeton.
He also did a lot to stimulate (and democratize) the local artistic scene, fostering a definite local character that was emphatically independent of the New York City painting scene. One of the interesting New Jersey artists featured is George Segal (1924-2000), who spent much of his life in the New Brunswick area. In one phase of his interesting career as a sculptor he experimented in using impregnated gauze bandages—Johnson and Johnson brand, of course—as a medium for shaping human and other forms. Among his more monumental metal works, and one of his finest pieces (depicting Abraham about to sacrifice his son Isaac) is one well known to Princetonians as it is sited just outside the east end of the magnificent cathedral-like chapel at one of the prominent entrances to the campus. It has an interesting history. Segal was responding to the slaughter conducted by the undisciplined Ohio National Guard at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. The Kent State campus is obviously where the piece should be, but its implications were as unacceptable as they were obvious to the political regime of Governor James Rhodes. Bible-based art can be very disturbing. Try reading Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, which is another serious response to the story in Genesis 22.
There is a playful theme in the Sculpture Grounds that is most pleasing. In the first place, the enterprise embraces a very catholic view of the idea of “sculpture” itself. Very few (if indeed any) of the artistic creations scattered over the landscape are the products of stone shaped by hammer and chisel. The works produced mostly involve less of Praxiteles than of Rosie the Riveter. The range of subject matter is as varied and surprising as the subject matter presented. One may safely assume that artists, on the whole, are a creative and whimsical bunch, and that there are many among them who are formally or informally experts in art history. Thus much of the art is allusive or ironic, sometimes in a campy way. Several of the more striking pieces echo famous paintings. A huge Goyaesque maja (curvaceous babe reclining on a couch) bursts forth from a small hillside. Manet’s famous picnic scene (“Dejeuner sur l’herbe”) becomes three-dimensional. There are also transformations from literature. The Weird Sisters from Macbeth boil and bubble along with their cauldron.
The horticultural aspects of the Grounds for Sculpture are naturally as important as the sculptures themselves. Or at least they form a perfect symbiosis with them. New Jersey is called “the Garden State” for a reason I was slow to appreciate in years past. Thinking that I came from a “real” agricultural state, and now surrounded by superhighways and burgeoning suburbia nearly everywhere, I only slowly realized the richness and fecundity of the New Jersey soil, especially in this part of the state. And the summer climate is truly semi-tropical; there is a controlled lushness everywhere. The Grounds for Sculpture is a preserved quarter section of land, half of it still wildish in its contours, partially bordered by a small lake, and surrounded by, well, stereotypical New Jersey. I supposed that the sheer surprise of it all is one of the more remarkable aspects of the place. The landscaping and gardening are most impressive.
We spent more than two hours in our walking tour. I suspect we saw perhaps half of what was most interesting. My ambulatory stamina is no longer what it once was, and I repeatedly had to sit down for a moment or two at one of the sylvan resting spots scattered throughout the grounds. The moderated natural wildness of it all—never more than a matter of a short walk away from a comfortable bench or a swinging bench seat hanging from a stout tree limb—was my imagined version of an updated Arcady. It is a tourist site, yet offers a sense of uncrowdedness. The vibe is of privacy and even to a degree a kind of contemplative solitude. The guardians must monitor the flow of visitors. We saw many other visitors, of course—and had one fairly extensive, pleasant conversation with one group of them. As the afternoon shadows lengthened, we rounded out the tour with a leisurely meal. We dined in the fashionable restaurant in the gardens—Rat’s. A good meal if an over-priced one. Perhaps like me you might need reminding of why somebody might name a restaurant “Rat’s.” The eponymous rat is a dignified and lovable character in Kenneth Graham’s Wind in the Willows, one of the best-selling children’s books of all time, first published in 1908, in which his monicker of preference is “Ratty”. But we are a long way from 1908, and rapidly distancing ourselves from any shared popular literature; so that a restaurant rodent needs explanation.
