Meet Me in the Gift Shop: Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens

Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens

2051 South Flagler Drive,
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401

(561) 832-5328

www.ansg.org

AT A GLANCE: Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens
Date of visit	Saturday, February 3, 2018
Parking	Limited free street parking.
Amount of time needed to peruse exhibits:	20 – 30 minutes for the indoor exhibits; 40 – 50 for the sculptures outside
Amount of time needed for gift shop	5 minutes
The “must have” souvenir	Branded coffee mug
Online shopping	No. If you see it and like it, buy it.
Kid friendly shopping	No.
Kid friendly	Yes
Dress code	West Palm Beach is a town where you should dress tastefully. You’ll feel woefully conspicuous in “beach” clothes.
Be sure to…..	Spend a quick 5 minutes with the docent inside of the museum.
Nearby/other establishments to visit	Norton Museum of Art is a 10-minute walk (1/2 mile) north of the Sculpture Gardens. www.norton.org
Walkability, general downtown area / amount of traffic	This area of West Palm Beach is located away from the downtown area, and isn’t walkable.
Safety, in terms of type and number of crimes committed in general area	Generally safe. Lock your car, place your valuables out of sight, and be aware of your surroundings.

West Palm Beach is a 2-hour drive south of where we live, so we set out early last Saturday for the Norton Museum of Art, a museum created by Chicago steel baron Ralph Hubbard Norton is a place to display his extensive art collection. We were coaxed there by the promise of seeing original Picasso, Monet, and Pollack art. Well on our way to West Palm Beach, I started reading up on the Museum in Fodor’s Travel Guide, realizing that we would arrive at least two hours before they opened. What to do, what to do? An hour into our drive to West Palm Beach found me searching the internet for something else to do. That’s how we discovered the unique Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens.

The entrance to the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens

The Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens are sited at the dead-end of a charming residential area, replete with quaint brick streets and towering shade trees. We spotted it by the sculpture of a large head on its front lawn. I thought it was strange, but as you know by now, I’d rather avoid the nuances of contemporary art. I accidentally begin calling it “the Head Museum,” which had an entirely different connotation back in the drug-hazy 60s and 70s. I really thought that the indoor museum exhibits were going to be trippy and mind-blowing. It turned out to be so, but in an entirely different way.

This is the residential house across the street from the Museum and Gardens. The parking is on the street of houses like this.

As Bob wisecracked, this was the poorer section of town; the real money is across the water.

Walking into the museum part of the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens (ANSG) is a cozy feeling, akin to entering a friend’s home. That is, if that friend happened to have lots of money and an architect at their disposal. No soaring ceilings or ornate staircases here. It was welcoming, warm and honest, without pretention. As my first stop, I was mightily impressed by the restrooms, located in the back corner of the Museum in the room with the big fireplace. I hollered out to Bob to come and take a look. I chose to ignore the incredulous look on his face, but it was tough to ignore me. I brought him into the restroom and asked him if the men’s room was as nice as this one. He replied that there was no men’s room, which I took to mean that they’d have to find a tree and go au naturelle. Luckily, that wasn’t the case. The Museum had one unisex bathroom, and we were both standing in it.

The gift shop is immediately to your right upon entering the front door. Although it's small in size, I feel they did a nice job of selling merchandise directly related to the gardens. These coffee mugs are the only branded items.

Pretty notecards and calendars on the top shelf, and informative books about
Gordon Cheung and Ann Norton on the bottom shelf.

Another Ann Norton art book and a fun book for children.
These three photos capture the entire gift shop.

Having to calm me down after this heady restroom visit, we were greeted by the docent on duty. I liked this docent; I usually don’t. Most of them drone on and on in a never-ending monotone voice. The ANSG docent relayed the Museum’s history and how the gardens come to be; mainly because Ann Norton’s sculptures don’t fit just anywhere. They’re considerably large, and she felt that displaying them on her own property would do nicely. Ms. Docent also told us the remarkable story of how the “Head” on display in the front yard is held together by gravity. The artist’s smaller indoor works had to have steel rods inserted through them in the event of rowdy boys’ shenanigans.

Ms. Docent entertained us with stories from back in the day in the Netherlands when the tulip bulb hysteria swept through. There were bulbs that cost more than the average tulip collector’s home. However, disease, thankfully, came knocking on the door and slapped everyone back to reality. I say thankfully because it woke folks up and let them realize that nothing is permanent, including extravagantly priced tulips. She told an enjoyable story, and went on to make the connection between the tulip story and the Museum’s current collection by Gordon Cheung, a digital photographer. Ms. Docent explained that Cheung used the same concept of plant disease and the crazy expensive tulips. The artist had purposely introduced a virus to mimic dying tulips. Being a weekend gardener myself, I thought it was a nifty idea to photograph the flowers as they succumbed to an almost certain death. Bob had to gently and patiently explain that the introduced virus was a computer virus, not a botanical one. Oh. I wasn’t as impressed after that. Cheung used digital photography to capture how the computer virus decayed the original image, photographing four stages of the decomposition.

Dying tulips

I’ve written before that I don’t understand contemporary art. Cheung’s exhibit added to that miscomprehension. I’d look at Phase 1 photos, then try to compare to a Phase 2 photo. They looked the same to me. As only an engineer can, Bob pointed out the similarities and differences between all four phases. He enjoyed the exhibit and the concept behind it; I just wanted to look at pretty things. I found one that I kind of liked. It was one of the digital photos that resembled the Northern Lights, ablaze with wondrous colors. Wondering aloud why this pretty picture was exhibited in the same room as the weird dying tulips, Bob, once again with the same patience, explained that this work of art wasn’t some galaxy or Star Trek tribute; it was merely Phase 4 of a dead tulip. Oh.

Ms. Docent left us with a challenge. Norton was a stewardship of nature, and felt that to view her work that the presence of the land need also be seen and appreciated. She saw herself as part of the natural world, and wanted her creations to exude the same quality. As a result of this belief, she always put a gateway / opening in her sculptures. Our mission was to find that opening in her sculptures through which the natural world could be viewed, in essence, seeing things as she once did. Challenge accepted. Exiting through the Museum’s back door, we were immediately speechless at the first sculpture. It is forty three feet long, and located in the middle of a reflecting pool. Incredible.


A charming spot for afternoon tea is immediately out the back door.

This of art is 43' long and is sited in the middle of a reflecting pool. Norton made her own bricks for this work.

This cozy dining area is also right outside the back door. Unfortunately, we visited too early for lunch.

The Garden's grotto

Norton's workshop

Fodor’s, Frommer’s, and the Rough Guide travel guides fail to mention the Museum and Gardens. Doing a bit of internet digging, there are reviews of ANSG, most including the phrase, “photos don’t do it justice,” which is true, because Norton’s sculptures spilled over on my camera’s viewfinder. For history of Ann Norton, her art, and the Sculpture Garden, take five minutes to watch the ANSG’s video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3RVvCTsULs. The photography is excellent.