Western's Outdoor Sculpture Collection Goes Indoors

In the late 1950s, even before government agencies decided to fund public art at new construction projects, Western Washington University started its Outdoor Sculpture Collection—which grew into the most important in the state, rivaled now only by what you find at Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park.

It includes minimalist, totemic, process-based, earthworky, feminist, poppy, philosophical, enigmatic, great-big-bronze, and disembodied sculptures and installations by artists such as Isamu Noguchi, Donald Judd, Mark di Suvero, Richard Serra, Alice Aycock, Nancy Holt, Bruce Nauman, Robert Morris (this one, a mysterious rising of steam from an otherwise plain lawn, is my current favorite).