The gardens were a labor of love for Frederik and Lena Meijer. They even had an apartment at the gardens where Lena lived after Frederik's death until she died at age 102. One of the exhibits at the garden is a scale reproduction of the farm house where she grew up. It reminded me of the Henry Ford museum outside Detroit; he had relocated all of the buildings from his family's farm.
I'm by no means knowledgeable about modern sculpture, but the permanent collection includes works by Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, Dale Chihuly, Edgar Degas, Keith Haring, Joan Miro, Henry Moore, Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen, Auguste Rodin, George Segal, and Ai Weiwei, plus many others.
The first bad news on arriving at the garden was finding out that we were too few people to rate the private tram tour we expected. Instead we would take the public tram. But the bad news turned into good news when we realized we didn't have a scheduled private tram and could therefore eat first.
I don't know about the others, but I was ravenous. The pre-ordered lunch (I had a chicken salad sandwich) at the garden cafeteria was delicious.
After lunch, we moseyed down to the public tram for our tour of the extensive gardens and sculptures. Although the tram was slow, it didn't stop, so pictures were snapped on the fly. There were several I would have liked to visit at leisure, but it was not to be.
This is Grand Rapids Arch.
The grouping I, You, She or He... was created by artist Jaume Plensa for the garden.
The sculpture of a tree holding shards of glass is by Ariel Schlesinger and is called Ways to Say Goodbye. It memorializes the Holocaust. For more about the sculpture and the memorial, visit the West Michigan Holocaust Memorial.
Although the waterfall may look natural, it too is a sculpture using boulders brought to the site.
Cabin Creek, by Deborah Butterfield may look like it's made of driftwood, but it is actually bronze. Cabin Creek is the place where the original wood for the sculpture was found.
Ms. Butterfield specializes in sculptures of horses.
Another horse sculpture in the garden that I was able to visit after the tram is American Horse. Leonardo da Vinci created a monumental horse sculpture for the Duke of Milan in the 15th century. Leonardo's version never got beyond a clay model, which was destroyed by enemy troops. The story behind the creation of this interpretation and the matching one donated by Mr. Meijer to the city of Milan, is more complex than we heard at the garden. It has different twists depending on who is doing the telling.
The vision for recreating the sculpture started with Charles C. Dent. None of the material on Dent's involvement mentions Fred Meijer, so there was conflict somewhere.
A book told from the Meijer perspective addresses "at least some of the complexities, the argumentation, some of the disagreements, some of the dead ends."
Where everyone agrees is that the final result is to the credit of the sculptor, Nina Akamu. At the link, she states: "The sculpture ... pays homage to the creative genius of Leonardo. It is not intended to be a recreation of his sculpture." Indeed it stands on its own as a testament of her own creative genius.
In addition to the horse above, another place in the garden I particularly wanted to see was the Japanese Garden. Our guide volunteered to show me the most efficient way to get to the horse and then the garden. I was glad for the help even though I suspect her primary motive was keeping me from getting lost in the huge gardens. All the other travelers "behaved" by heading to the gift shop.
The garden has a tea house and periodically hosts formal tea ceremonies. We were told that the waiting list for participation is long.
There were various overlooks, high like this one, and low along the water. I wished I had more time here.
Adjacent to the landscape garden was a Zen garden.
I didn't care for it because the raking was too linear. I also found the phony rocks along the wall off-putting.
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