Grounds for Sculpture & Asbury Park Boardwalk – New Jersey – September 10

Grounds for Sculpture & Asbury Park Boardwalk – New Jersey – September 10


I woke today still not doing well. We had a 10:00 tour time for the sculpture garden and we arrived a bit late due to a stop for Pepto Chewables. (‘nuff said?)


What an awesome outdoor museum this is. We watched the orientation film before heading outside on this beautiful sunny & warm day to wander the grounds. 


Grounds for Sculpture is a 42-acre sculpture park, museum, and arboretum founded on the site of the former New Jersey State Fairgrounds and it opened to the public in 1992.  They do a fantastic job of combining the sculptures with the botanical gardens. It’s a bit like an Easter egg hunt in that around every corner you are surprised by something, then walking a little closer, others unfold that were hidden by the landscape. There are stairs to climb and doors to open to find hidden gems. You wander through meadows and unusual trees, water lily ponds and paths. It may sound chaotic, but it is organized well and you always come back out to continue to the next section. 

 this one was on top of a hill as you walked outside

 Sometimes, you had to look twice to see if it was real people or sculptures. Oftentimes, people would be posing next to the sculptures.

 real lotus flower - not a sculpture

now that is some scary art....

 this art was in the median in the parking lot

 we came around a corner and this was a real peacock, but we waited to see it move first

 we walked through this meadow

 and ran into these bulls

 around the next corner was this larger than life scene

 wow, they had a sculpture that looked like me....

behind the scenes sculpture

 I'm at the bottom - you can see the size of most of these sculptures

 outdoor dining area to the Peacock Cafe

We wandered until lunch time and we stopped at the Peacock Café for a quick lunch. 

We finished the outside exhibits and then toured the indoor museums. 

 Greg is quite the artist

 one side of the sculpture

 the other side of the sculpture

 The Chamber of Internal Dialogue - outside

 outisde the chamber - the other side

 inside the chamber

 inside the chamber on the opposite side

 it's a warming hut

 plexiglass cube

 they made good use of misters 

 this sculpture was hiding behind these bushes to pee, so Greg joined him 

path to the next exhibit

 on top of a hill looking down

 back on the main path for the last of the outdoor exhibits

We weren’t as thrilled with the indoor art. One was huge blow-up cubes. One had a tire spinning in “mud”. The main one was more interesting. 

 back outside at the main entrance to tour the main indoor exhibits

 painted trays entitled "midnight snack"

I was feeling icky again and craved some ice cream, so on the way to Asbury Park we stopped for some.


The board walk was pretty quiet this time of year, despite the beautiful weather. Most of the stores were closed, but a few things were open. We mainly just strolled the boardwalk and enjoyed the weather and “the shore”. 

 the boardwalk

 The Berkeley - Oceanfront Hotel

We drove back to the hotel and had dinner.


https://photos.app.goo.gl/f1q5VzFBtWzuFTZM8

Tomorrow we leave for Swedesboro, NJ where we will spend 4 nights. Two of the days we will spend in Philadelphia.