Environmental sculpture

Many figurative works of George Segal, for example, do qualify as environmental, in that—instead of being displayed on a pedestal as presentations to be gazed upon—they occupy and perturb the setting in which they are placed.

A less known but more appropriate example is Athena Tacha's 2-acre (8,100 m2) park Connections in downtown Philadelphia (between 18th St. and 19th St. two blocks north of Vine St.), created as a landscape art environment after her winning a competition in 1980 (where Segal was actually one of the finalists).

It was the first park designed entirely by an artist "sculpting the land" with planted terraces, rock clusters and paths (completed in 1992).

By Galston's definition, an environmental sculpture is not merely site-specific art as many conventional, figurative, marble monuments were created for specific sites.

Galston stresses that environmental sculpture entails the idea that the piece also functions to alter or permeate the existing environment or even to create a new environment in which the viewer is invited to participate: "The finished sculpture and site become one integrated unit, working together to create a unified mood or atmosphere," she writes.

Younger art historians will have to sort out the development of this marginalized "movement" and the importance of artists such as Olga Kisseleva, Patricia Johanson, Athena Tacha, Mary Miss, Alice Adams, Elyn Zimmerman, Merle Temkin and others who, from the early 1970s on, won and executed large outdoor public art commissions with new formal, kinesthetic and social underpinnings.