About Grounds For Sculpture
Grounds For Sculpture combines art and beckoning spaces to welcome, surprise, and engage all visitors in the artist's act of invention.
Grounds For Sculpture (“GFS”) is a 42-acre sculpture park, arboretum, and museum, founded by the late Seward Johnson. Opened to the public in 1992, it has become one of the premier cultural destinations in New Jersey, welcoming and enchanting 250,000 visitors annually. Located in Hamilton, New Jersey, Grounds For Sculpture is easily accessible from the New York City and Philadelphia metropolitan areas by public transit and is open year-round.
Featuring over 300 contemporary sculptures by renowned and emerging artists in a beckoning, ever-changing landscape, GFS combines art and nature to surprise, inspire, and engage visitors from all backgrounds in the artist’s act of invention.
In addition to its permanent collection, the campus includes more than 23,000 square feet of exhibition space, 25 artist studios, and, as of May 2025 will merge with the Johnson Atelier (“JA”). GFS and the JA have a symbiotic relationship working to uplift artists and support the goals of taking their creative practice to the next level.
GFS’s ability to collect and exhibit artwork is central to the organization’s mission to create a space for visitors from all backgrounds to interact with and find a connection to contemporary sculpture. Programming seeks to engage visitors of all ages with the collection and exhibitions as well as offer a deeper connection to artists’ process and approach to making. Founder Seward Johnson envisioned GFS as a “public space where the broadest cross section of the public is invited to relate to sculptural arts and nature in an emotional way and encouraged to overcome any natural, habitual, or learned resistance or fear of art, for an experience that elevates the soul and heals the spirit.”
GFS seeks to be a leader, a creative magnet, and a vibrant space that invites a diverse public to create, learn and discover personal meaning in their interactions with art, artists, nature, and one another. GFS is committed to supporting the creation of ambitious new artworks and encouraging artists to expand their practice.
GFS has expanded the presentation of work by leading contemporary artists to be reflective and responsive to the dynamic world around us, including MacArthur Genius Joyce J. Scott, Puerto Rican ceramicist Roberto Lugo, and the first major exhibition in the United States of the Indian conceptual artist Tallur L.N. GFS is a vibrant forum that invites a diverse public to create, learn, and discover personal meaning in their interactions with art, nature, and one another. Recent institutional partnerships with The Color Network, Monument Lab, Artworks Trenton and Spiral Q have led to new collaborative models in our curatorial approach.
GFS’s current Strategic Plan identifies key priorities that will drive the next 3-5 years of work toward the organization’s larger vision:
Impact – Expand and deepen our influence by securing GFS as a vital cultural hub.
Relevance – Ensure that we evolve to reflect the dynamic world in which we live.
Capacity – Increase our capacity to deliver upon our vision strategically and sustainably.
About the Johnson Atelier
Since 1974, the Johnson Atelier has engaged with both local and international artists to design, produce, and restore works of art. The Johnson Atelier expands the capacity of artists through immersive making and creative collaboration – creating cultural experiences to enrich communities and inspire engagement. The Atelier was founded on the principle of solving problems for creators. The design team employs innovation, investigation, and bespoke solutions to bring the artist’s vision to life.
Seward founded the Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture to help sculptors retain control over their artwork and gain access to previously guarded production techniques. The Johnson Atelier rapidly became an incubator for the advancement of art and technology. From all over the world, artists gathered at the Johnson Atelier to collectively advance all phases of production. This gathering of artists provided a stimulating and sometimes unorthodox environment in which everyone’s artistic practice could bloom through collaboration, dialogue and discovery. In recent years, Johnson Atelier has produced works of art in partnership with Kara Walker, Martin Puryear, Adrian Villar Rojas, Tallur L.N and many other notable artists.
Located next door to Grounds for Sculpture on an adjacent property in Hamilton, New Jersey, the Johnson is easily accessible from the New York City and Philadelphia metropolitan areas by public transit and is open year-round.
The Grounds For Sculpture and Johnson Atelier Merger
In May 2025, Grounds For Sculpture (GFS) and Johnson Atelier became one unified body, forming a dynamic new catalyst for the production, conservation, and exhibition of large-scale, high-caliber sculptures, and amplified art experiences. This union cements artist and founder Seward Johnson’s legacy, and his vision for Grounds For Sculpture and Johnson Atelier to work as one body.
The merger promises to usher in a new era of artistic synergy, expanding impact, recognition, and artist support on a global scale. By combining the unique strengths of both institutions, GFS is set to redefine the landscape of large-scale art experiences and community engagement, creating a dynamic platform that bridges the gap between artists and audiences while fostering innovation in contemporary art.
Rooted in Seward Johnson’s radical approach to discovery and making the arts available to all, these two institutions have given artists unprecedented access to tools for sculpture production and invited the public to engage with contemporary sculpture collections and exhibitions for half a century. Grounds For Sculpture and the Johnson Atelier have always worked side by side. The result of this union will be a singular, distinct model that realizes Seward’s vision and best positions Grounds For Sculpture as a leader in supporting a globally diverse generation of artists.
Grounds For Sculpture will assume management and operations of Johnson Atelier and its state-of-the-art modeling, scanning, milling, painting and finishing capabilities, along with its assets including the seven-acre Meadow; the physical plan that houses the Johnson Atelier; the Motor Exhibits Building, which currently houses studios for 25 artists; and 2 apartments for guest artists. The vision, purpose, and practices will all remain the same.
This unification creates an epicenter of industry-leading production and makes way for even greater relationship-building between the next generation of artists and a broader audience. Johnson Atelier will be able to more effectively cultivate relationships with artists who might exhibit at, or add to the permanent collection of, Grounds For Sculpture; and this merger better positions Grounds For Sculpture to feed Johnson Atelier’s project pipeline with artist residencies and off-campus programming that increase the artists’ — and Grounds For Sculpture’s — reach with global audiences.
What’s more, this strategic integration represents an enterprising business model: a nonprofit sculpture park operating a revenue-generating sculpture fabrication business. Grounds For Sculpture will expand its ability to produce work that can be exhibited on its own campus and facilitate the production of work for venues around the world, allowing the organization to go beyond its gates and deliver on its mission to make sculpture and public art broadly accessible.
For more information on Grounds For Sculpture and the Johnson Atelier, please visit: https://www.groundsforsculpture.org/ or https://www.johnsonatelier.com/
The Opportunity
Reporting to the Chief Audience Officer (“CAO”), the Curator will work to expand the reach, relevance and impact of the Grounds For Sculpture’s artistic contributions by playing a key role in strategizing, articulating and executing a vision and plan for the curatorial program. This includes the development of rotating exhibitions, curatorial programs, and projects that support experimentation, artistic and intellectual exchange across both Grounds For Sculpture and the Johnson Atelier.
The Curator will have the opportunity to steward, engage with and organize exhibitions of living artists, commission new work for exhibitions, and expand the collection. Fundamentally, the Curator will be tasked with creating greater awareness of Ground For Sculpture’s mission to integrate art, horticulture and beckoning spaces to welcome, surprise, and engage visitors in the artist’s act of invention.
The merger of Grounds For Sculpture and Johnson Atelier will create a new and unique opportunity for curatorial exploration and impact. The institutions have a history of supporting artists in taking ambitious next steps in their practice and connecting artists and their practices with the public. The Curator will be responsible for elevating GFS’s profile through exhibitions that encourage new understandings of exemplary works of sculpture and seek to highlight and support the varied works produced by contemporary artists from all backgrounds and should incorporate opportunities to honor traditional, avant-garde and experimental work across the field.
The Curator is a critical partner to the GFS Executive Director, Board of Directors and the Johnson Atelier in building and strengthening the vision and artistic identity and developing inventive processes and projects at an exciting time for the institution.
In consultation with the GFS Executive Director, Chief Audience Officer and Director of Exhibitions and Collections, the Curator oversees and executes GFS’s artistic program and sets the direction and master calendar of the exhibition program. As such, the Curator provides leadership in the organization and content of exhibitions, their interpretation, accompanying scholarship, and related efforts.
The Curator ensures that the rotating exhibition program meets the mission of the museum and is fundable and marketable. The Curator works with the Director of Exhibitions and Collections to ensure smooth installation and project management of exhibitions, the Chief Development Officer to cultivate civic, philanthropic and governmental relationships and the Marketing team to guarantee marketability of content on various channels.
The successful candidate will have excellent organizational skills, exceptional and accessible communication skills and a spirit of openness and collaboration. The Curator will support the efforts of the Registrar and Director of Collections and Exhibitions who steward the collection and define best practices for the storage, exhibition, and conservation of the collection.