Sculpture in the Great Outdoors at PepsiCo

Wedding party along the shore of garden’s pond

Our American museums include a number of notable outdoor sculpture displays. One of our finest collections of outdoor works is not at a museum, but in the extensive, handsomely landscaped terrain surrounding the PepsiCo World Headquarters in Purchase, New York, a not-so-distant suburb of the big city.

Headquarters buildings seen through Isamu Noguchi’s stone Energy Void. Photos: courtesy of PepsiCo

The decades following the middle of the last century – circa 1950-1970 – were when many major American corporations built new headquarters in the suburbs, where their key staff members had decided to settle. Some of our most distinguished Modern architects designed suburban offices for such companies as IBM, General Electric and AT&T. In recent decades, socio-economic changes have led our leading corporations to locate – or relocate – in urban centers that are now where most employees prefer to be. Those grand last-century offices have often been divided up for smaller tenants, converted to different uses, or demolished.

Portion of Jean Dubuffet’s Kioske l’evide, foreground, with Alexander Calder’s Hat’s Off beyond

PepsiCo, a maker of soft drinks – now diversified into a variety of juices, snacks and cereals – is one corporation that still occupies an ambitious suburban campus. Completed in 1970, its office complex was designed by the renowned architect Edward Durell Stone. It consists of a series of “inverted ziggurat” office blocks around a central fountain court, set in acreage that had previously belonged to a polo club. The grounds were initially designed by Edward Durell Stone, Jr., a prominent landscape architect in his own right.

The leadership of PepsiCo became interested in siting outdoor sculpture on these grounds, even before the buildings were designed, and in 1980 commissioned the garden designer Russell Pageto reconfigure and expand the gardens. Since the time of Page’s death in 1985, the garden development has been entrusted to equally skillful Francois Goffnet. The result is remarkable not just for its collection, which now numbers 46 pieces, but for the sensitivity with which each is set – in its own open space or before a backdrop of carefully shaped greenery.

Now the enjoyment of this sculpture garden is not reserved just for those who work at PepsiCo or visit on business. The public is invited to roam at will through the gardens every Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m – subject to exceptions for extreme weather or corporate needs (schools and camps can arrange for weekday group visits). However, there are a half dozen of the 46 works, located close to or between the office blocks, that are not accessible to the public.

Henry Moore’s bronze Locking Piece sculpture

The thoughtfully laid out parking areas that serve the staff during the week comfortably accommodate weekend parking. There is a well-designed visitors pavilion with restrooms and a pleasant picnic grove (bring your own food). On summer days, the place is well populated with people of all ages and ethnicities, and the grounds are popular settings for wedding-party photography.

At the gatehouse to the property, visitors receive an informative handout, including a map that identifies and locates the sculptures, as well as 11 distinctive gardened areas within the grounds – lily pond garden, birch grove, Japanese iris garden, etc.

Just across the road from the PepsiCo entrance is the entrance to the State University of New York (“SUNY”) College at Purchase. Its extensive campus, with woods and fields, was developed simultaneously with Pepsico, around 1970, and includes some prominent large-scale sculptures among buildings by prominent architects of that time –Edward L. Barnes, Philip Johnson, Venturi & Scott Brown, Gunnar Birkerts, and others. Also on campus is the Neuberger Museum of Art, specializing in Modern and African art and works by emerging artists.

For detailed, up-to-date information, refer to www. pepsico.com/sculpture-gardens

Richard Erdman’s large-scale travertine Passage