by Doug likes a nice sculpture park, so we decided to pay a visit to Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park and Museum in Hamilton, Ohio (about 30 miles northwest of Cincinnati). For extra fun, we decided to splurge on an “Art Cart” (really just a golf cart) to navigate the grounds in search of art and adventure.
Of course there were the random pieces scattered throughout out the park, but an unexpected highlight was the home of the park’s founder, Harry T. Wilks (1925-2014). He purchased 40 acres of land in 1987 and built Pyramid House, which indeed features a pyramid, as shown in the cover photo to this post.
The home is underground, so it’s hard to get a feel that it’s a home at all –– it just looks like another sculpture when you first see it. But you can see in the cover photo a skylight extending from one side of the pyramid, and there is another extending on the opposite side.
There’s also a tower that is purely for viewing the sites, but it’s not currently open to the public. The inside was another surprise, a showcase for ancient Greek, Roman, Etruscan, Syrian and Egyptian antiquities dating to 1550 BCE!
Wilks spent several years acquiring large sculptures and additional adjacent properties, increasing the park size to 300 acres. He began landscaping the park and adding infrastructure. It opened to the public in 1996, creating a non-profit organization to run it created the following year.
There are about 70 large outdoor sculptures on display, in addition to a museum that hosts contemporary exhibitions.
Wherefore Art Thou, Sam McKinney, 2010. It features Romeo and Juliet are mounted on either side, their hands reaching to each other through a heart-shaped opening.
