As you wander through the Besthoff Sculpture Garden for the first time, it’s hard to envision its plan and nearly impossible to gauge its boundaries and extent. Instead, the landscape gradually unfolds before you, much like New Orleans itself, where you are pretty sure to lose any sense of the compass. The illusion that all of this just naturally happened, that the landscape is unplanned, allows you to more easily immerse yourself in the art. It’s a case of nature protecting, even nurturing, whatever works of men and women happen to be placed there. This is a lovely place for looking at pieces of sculpture.

When visiting the garden…I was delighted by the quality of Sawyer’s landscapes and the experience of walking through them and by the design and scale of Ledbetter’s bridges, pavilions, exedra and fences.