A "Lozziwurm" play sculpture among the trees will be ready near the Carnegie Museum of Art's main entrance in Oakland. The "Lozziwurm" is a colorful, twisting, tubular play structure designed by Swiss artist Yvan Pestalozzi in 1972. This is the first US installation of a "Lozziwurm" and it will be open to the public.
The "Lozziwurm" is one of several projects leading up to the 2013 Carnegie International, which opens October 5. It reflects the International’s explicit engagement with the city of Pittsburgh, the museum’s patrons, and conceptions of play.
"You can’t be creative -- without being playful, without playing with ideas, and we really wanted to set the tone going into this exhibition and the run up to this exhibition with this really, really colorful, vibrant play structure outside,” said museum spokesman Jonathan Gaugler.
The Carnegie International is one of the oldest surveys of contemporary art in the world, second only to the Venice Biannale, (Carnegie has been doing it since 1896). However, now there are hundreds of biennials around the world; and what Gaugler stressed this is something the museum does in collaboration with the city.
“We didn’t want to drop a bunch of contemporary art on the city out of nowhere and say ‘here you go,’ we wanted to say ‘look, this is something that’s coming, something that means something to us and the city, and to develop the exhibition in exchange with the city, and to set the tone outside of the museum walls as well as inside the museum walls’ and this is one way we think we can do that.”
He said the introduction of the “pocket park” by the Carnegie Museum of Art compliments the culture of Pittsburgh.
“Pittsburgh has this wonderful, long history of pocket parks, all these little parklets, all over the place. It’s kind of a part of our urban experience, we have these little playgrounds kind of nested in our neighborhoods, and we kind of wanted to reflect that at the museum where approaching the museum you have a little parklet right there that you can just go and enjoy.”
The museum has broken ground and the play structure is set to open in late April.
