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Olympic Sculpture Park is a public park affiliated with the Seattle Art Museum (SAM). It’s located a short walk from Seattle Center near the waterfront. Admission is free and the park is open 365 days a year.
The park was once a contaminated industrial site, but the Seattle Art Museum transformed it into a green space to display public art. It opened in 2007.
PACCAR Pavilion
The main building is the PACCAR Pavilion. Inside, there’s a snack bar and seating area and it’s often used as an event venue.
Olympic Sculpture Park
There is a path through the park that leads to a stairway at the end of Broad Street. Along it are about 20 works of art.
The most prominent is Eagle by Alexander Calder, which was dedicated in 1974 and originally stood in Fort Worth, Texas. Another that caught my eye is a stainless steel tree called Split (2003) by Roxy Paine.
Across the bridge, which is an art installation called Seattle Cloud Cover (Teresita Fernández, 2006), there are stairs down to a small plaza near the waterfront. There, you can see a fountain called Father and Son (2005) and Eye Benches I, II and III (1996-97), both by Louise Bourgeois. There’s also a giant head called Echo (2011) by Jaume Plensa, who designed Crown Fountain in Millennium Park in Chicago.
Pier 70
Next to the stairs is Pier 70, which has been converted into office and retail space with restaurants. It was the location of the house for The Real World: Seattle (1998).
