On 20 January 2007, the Seattle Art Museum opened Olympic Sculpture Park to the public on the downtown waterfront. Designed by Weiss/Manfredi, the project transformed a former Unocal industrial brownfield into a free, nine-acre outdoor museum, pavilion, beach and public green space. Its collection brought large-scale modern and contemporary sculpture into an everyday urban setting, including works associated with Alexander Calder, Richard Serra, Louise Bourgeois, Mark di Suvero, Tony Smith and Teresita Fernandez. The park also joined ecological repair to museum practice, rebuilding shoreline habitat while creating a civic destination for public art.
It became a widely cited model for combining public sculpture, urban design and waterfront remediation.
