Earl W. Brydges Artpark State Park


Earl W. Brydges Artpark State Park is a state park located in the Village of Lewiston in Niagara County, New York. The park, which is officially named after former New York State Senator Earl Brydges, is generally referred to as Artpark. The park overlooks the Niagara Gorge.

Park description

The park is a venue for summer musical entertainment, public art, performing arts, theater and recreation programs provided by Artpark & Company, an independent nonprofit organization. The park offers picnic tables and pavilions, fishing, hiking, nature trail, cross-country skiing. Also located on the property is the Lewiston Mound, an archaeological site on the National Register of Historic Places.

Land art

Artpark was founded in 1974, one year after Robert Smithson's death, and had an artist's residency program in his honor. The park, created on the site of a former industrial waste dump, became an important site for works of the land art movement. It was the site of Alan Sonfist's Pool of Virgin Earth, a clay basin for catching aerial seeds, and projects by several women artists in the 1970s, including Michelle Stuart, Alice Adams and Agnes Denes and Nancy Holt. It continued to be an important laboratory for outdoor sculpture, with over 200 artists and collectives creating art and installations at the site between 1974 and 1984.

Selected visual art at Artpark

Installations at Artpark were intended to be temporary. Works created at the park included:

Performance venues

The facility features an Amphitheater venue, a Mainstage venue, and gathering, vending, and services areas. The Amphitheater consists of an outdoor stage with seating for up to 10,000 viewers in the front-of-stage viewing area, tiered lawn sections for general seating and reserved seating, and a fabric-covered terrace for sponsored seating. The Mainstage consists of an enclosed performance stage with fly house, orchestra pit, and back of house service areas, reserved seating sections accommodating up to 2400 viewers, and terrace and balcony areas for gatherings and events. The enclosure is opened along the back wall to a lawn area used for general seating for up to 2000 viewers. The Amphitheater holds musical performance on a weekly basis throughout the performance season. The Mainstage sponsors a number of musical and theatrical performances, presentations, school graduations, and other events during the performance season. For calendar of events: artpark.net