The Western Washington University Outdoor Sculpture Collection is a public sculpture collection [1] founded in 1960. [2] [3] The collection contains thirty-six public sculptures [4] spanning 190 acres of the Western Washington University campus. [5]
In 1957, the board of trustees of Western Washington University established a policy that encouraged public art on the campus. [3] The first work added to the collection, commissioned by Paul Thiry, [6] was James Fitzgerald's Rain Forest, in 1960. [3]
Campus architect Ibsen Nelsen commissioned Isamu Noguchi's "Skyviewing Sculpture" in the 1960s. [6]
Funding for the acquisition of the works in the collection came from a combination of sources that included the state's one percent for art law, The Virginia Wright Fund, [7] and the National Endowment for the Arts [8]
The collection is overseen by the director of the university's Western Art Gallery. As of 2015, the director of the collection is Hafþór Yngvason. [4]