Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden

In 1994, Jim Mason, a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University, arranged for two groups of men from the Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea to carve the New Guinea Sculpture Garden at Stanford University. The men were from several communities or villages of the Iatmul people and the Kwoma people.

The New Guinea Sculpture Garden is located in a small, wooded grove on the Stanford campus next to a dormitory. In addition to wooden and stone artworks, the garden also features landscaping and plants organized by Wallace M. Ruff, Professor Emeritus of Landscape Architecture, University of Oregon, and research fellow in the Department of Architecture and Building, Papua New Guinea University of Technology, Lae, Papua New Guinea. He was assisted by one of his students, Kora Korawali. The landscaping evokes the Sepik environment – river flanked by embankments - as well as the central plaza in Sepik villages, in front of an all-male cult house or men’s house, which are used for the staging of rituals.

The entrance to the garden is an open space, like the Sepik flood plain. But visitors quickly stroll into a forest of sculptures and trees reminiscent of a majestic Sepik cult house.