John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park

The park grew from the generosity of John and Mary Pappajohn, longtime Des Moines residents and passionate art collectors who assembled an important collection of contemporary sculpture. Rather than keep it private, they gave it to the city to be displayed in the open, creating a public park where world-class art meets everyday life, free for anyone to enjoy.

That act of philanthropy turned a downtown green into a cultural destination and a statement about the place of art in a growing city. The collection is stewarded by the Des Moines Art Center, one of the region's leading art institutions, which ensures the works are cared for and interpreted, so the park is both a gift and a lasting resource.

The park displays works by many of the giants of modern and contemporary sculpture, ranging from monumental abstract forms to striking figurative pieces, arranged across the lawns so that visitors can walk around and among them. Seeing such important art outdoors, in changing light and weather and against the backdrop of the city, gives it a different life than it would have inside museum walls.

The open setting invites a relaxed, unhurried encounter with the art. Families let children run between the sculptures, downtown workers cross the green on their lunch breaks, and art lovers linger over favorite pieces. The mix of ambition and accessibility, world-class work offered freely to all, is the park's defining quality.

The park sits in the heart of downtown Des Moines, within easy walking distance of the city's shops, restaurants, riverfront, and cultural sites. Des Moines, Iowa's capital and largest city, grew at the meeting of the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers and has developed a lively downtown with a strong food scene, a bustling farmers market, and a growing reputation as a Midwestern cultural hub.

From the sculpture park it is a short walk or drive to the gold-domed state capitol, the acclaimed Des Moines Art Center, and other attractions, making the green a natural centerpiece for a day exploring the capital. Its presence in the very middle of the city says a great deal about how Des Moines sees itself.

The rivers and prairies around Des Moines lie within the historic homelands of the Ioway, for whom the state is named, along with the Meskwaki, the Sauk, and the Dakota, whose peoples lived across central Iowa's river valleys and grasslands long before the city rose. The Meskwaki own the Meskwaki Settlement near Tama, northeast of the city, where their community lives today.

The deep prairie soils that helped Des Moines grow prosperous were built over thousands of years under tallgrass prairie, and the rivers that shaped the city were routes and homes for people here for millennia. That long history underlies the young, gleaming green where the modern sculptures now stand, a reminder of the deep past beneath a very contemporary place.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.