Olympic Sculpture Park - Art by the Bay

Photo: Chanilim714, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)

A stop on Seattle Pike Place and Downtown, a free self-guided tour.

Welcome to a free open-air museum. The Seattle Art Museum opened the Olympic Sculpture Park on January 20, 2007, on about 9 acres of former industrial land by the bay. Architects Weiss/Manfredi reshaped the site into a long zigzag path that climbs from the shoreline, over the railroad tracks and Elliott Avenue, up to a glass pavilion at the top.

Walk the path and look for the big pieces. Alexander Calder's bright red Eagle perches on the slope with the water behind it. Richard Serra's Wake is a set of huge curving steel walls you can walk between, and kids love the echoing corridors. Down near the water, Jaume Plensa's Echo is a tall, white, stretched-out face of a young girl with her eyes closed, turned toward Puget Sound.

At the bottom, the park also rebuilt a small pocket beach where young salmon can rest along the shore. Please look but don't climb on the sculptures, and check the posted hours, which follow the daylight.

Getting here: Continue north on the waterfront path to Broad Street, where the park begins, and follow the zigzag path uphill.

Did you know?: Until the 1970s this site was a fuel storage yard for the oil company Unocal, and the contaminated ground had to be cleaned up before any art could move in.

Photo op: Line up Calder's red Eagle against Elliott Bay, with the Olympic Mountains behind it on a clear day.

More on Wikipedia: Olympic Sculpture Park · Alexander Calder · Richard Serra · Jaume Plensa

Olympic Sculpture Park - Art by the Bay

Stops on this tour