Museum Park

The Museum Park, which covers more than 100 acres in total, offers an easy loop walk, short excursions among the trees and fields, or access to Raleigh's greenway trail system. As a bonus - there's art. Several sculptures dot the park.

The greenway is open to all manner of non-motorized vehicles, including skateboards, skates, scooters, and bicycles. Bicycles are only allowed on paved trails in the Museum Park. Dogs are also to stay on paved trails and should be leashed.

The main loop comprising a leg of the greenway and the park's half-mile Museum Green Trail brings you from one side of the museum around to the other. It and the greenway are paved and mostly flat.

The one-and-a-quarter-mile portion of the greenway is called the House Creek Greenway Trail in the Museum Park, but is known as the Reedy Creek Trail portion of the greenway system. To the east it connects to a pedestrian bridge over I-440, a landmark on the city's beltline. It includes a fairly steep hill toward the final leg before the bridge. To the west, it crosses Blue Ridge Road and eventually connects to N.C. State's Schenck Forest and Umstead State Park.

Users need to be cautioned that the land across the bridge is Meredith College's land, and they close a gate at sunset. They don't play either; if you're on the wrong side of the gate when it's time to close, tough luck. I know one of a trio of middle-aged women who had to climb the gate to get back to their cars at the museum despite their appeals to the security guard who was young enough to have been one of their sons. (The city is working on an alternate path that skirts Meredith's property.)

In addition to the paved loop, the Woodland Trail is a third of a mile long and connects to the greenway at either end. It includes some elevation changes, but is still an easy walk. The Prairie Trail cuts through a former pasture that is slowly being converted into a Piedmont prairie with native wildflowers and grasses. It is four-tenths of a mile long and a slight incline heading toward the museum.

There are a couple of other short, undesignated connecting trails in the park as well. A creek runs through the property, and a drainage pond sits behind the museum off of the Museum Green Trail. Looking across the pond and the green from a park bench, you can see the back of the museum and the amphitheater at left.

Guided tours are available for community and school groups, and can include education components related to nature, the environment and art for school kids. Occasional weekend tours for individuals can be arranged. The Gyre by Thomas Sayer (at the top of this page) is the park's signature artwork. It can be seen from some parts of the amphitheater and is lighted at night (the park closes at sunset). Some of the other pieces are temporary.

Patrick Dougherty's Trail Heads, woven from locally gathered sweet gum and maple saplings, is like an elaborate fort with several rooms. I remember thinking that, in my day, kids seeing this on a field trip would be cutting trees and limbs at home afterward to make their own. Do kids still build forts? (This sculpture has been removed from the park.)

Crossroads, by Martha Jackson-Jarvis, is described as "a tall sentinel of glass, carnelian and shattered brick marking the juncture of two trails." It looks like a cigar standing on end. I had never seen a photo of it among the few in newspapers and magazines that showed the small pieces of colored stone and glass among the brick.

The Cloud Chamber for the Trees and Sky by Chris Drury is a small brick room you can enter. A pinhole in the roof is supposed to make an inverted image of the sky inside the chamber. It's a nice place to sit in the cool dark for a few moments, anyway.

To See Jennie Smile, also on the Woodland Trail, is a stack of newspapers and wood by Steven Seigel. Pam, who is a copy editor for The News & Observer, spotted a headline she wrote.

Here's a map of the park.

The Art Museum Park is just west of the beltline in Raleigh. (Map)