deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum — Attraction in Lincoln

What a wonderful place! The museum was closed, but I had a great time on a beautiful, sunny spring day walking the grounds, enjoying the sculptures, grounds, and wooded trails. It's very thoughtfully laid out, with art on different levels of gardens, attractive, winding stone pathways and dirt trails, lawns, and gorgeous views everywhere you look--of art in the landscape, of a beautiful lake lined with trees, and the museum building itself.

I do wish more of the sculptures were interactive. They all had signs telling you not to touch the art. I understand about preservation, but I'm sure the big metal sculptures would hold up just fine to touch, and some of them--the giant hearts, for instance--are so textured they beg to be touched. They are all outside exposed to the elements, after all, so how bad can human hands be on metal? One exception to the "no touching" rule was the interactive musical sculpture by Matisse--a kind of xylophone-type instrument made of metal tubing you could play with sticks. People were playing it, and it sounded lovely on the breeze.

I went into the shop, which was a good size and had all manner of beautiful items. It would be a nice place to shop for a gift. The cafe had outdoor seating and a corn hole game, which was welcoming.

All of the people I encountered--from the woman at the ticket gate to the two gals in the shop--were all very friendly. They have free admission for people on public aid, which I thought was great.I highly recommend the deCordova if you enjoy...

AFTER paying the entrance fee, as we were about to pull through, the ticket window person informed us that the cafeteria, the store, the indoor bathrooms, and the indoor museum were closed (apparently the indoor museum has been under renovation for a while but there was no information posted on this at the entrance and no mention of anything being unavailable until after we paid). The QR code didn’t work for the map, so we walked back to the entrance where a different woman was at the window. I asked her where some of the works we wanted to see were and she said “I have no idea”. When I asked if we could have maps she gave me one and then turned away from me… I asked for another because we were going to split up and she said “No, I can only allow you have 1” and turned away again… (there were several stacks- it didn’t appear that they were in short supply- but if they were, an explanation would have been preferable to the cold shoulder…). So, for $26 we got to see a handful of sculptures, one map, and an attitude. Nice park but absolutely not worth the entrance fee. dCSP: If you’re offering (much) less you should be charging less, two entrance fees should “allow” you to get 2 maps, there should be someone on hand with some idea of what is in the park or, at the very least polite, and they should let people know of the limited operating status before taking their money and waving them...

I went to The De Cordova today and I have to say I was pretty disappointed. My husband, son and I were excited to finally take an outing. We get to the sculpture park and the place looked like a snow park. None of the paths were cleared making getting around very difficult. Nothing had markers on it so I didn’t know what or who’s sculpture I was viewing and no clear path of viewing. We felt like we were wandering and slip sliding away.

I went into the museum after a lousy outside experience to be greeted roughly by an attendant in the lobby of the museum building. She asked if we had a reservation, and I said I wasn’t sure. She didn’t offer to help, just gruffly told me and my son that we would have to leave because all of the reservations were booked for the day. When I got back to the car my husband said “of course we had a reservation” and I went back to the museum. I was again greeted by the same attendant who welcomed me in but no offer to share information on the museum just where the exhibits started. I’m 60 years old and have been going and enjoying museums my whole life and this is marked as one of the most disappointing. I understand that COVID has the art world in a headlock but this place clearly hasn’t got their act together. If you want to walk the sculpture park,...