Why I love the Des Moines Art Center, Sculpture Park

The first thing I do when I come home to Des Moines is drive downtown and circle the Pappajohn Sculpture Park. It has become my ritual.

I love visiting art museums and the more of them I see, the more I appreciate the art in Des Moines. When the Wall Street Journal ran a travelogue story last year highlighting museums from Minneapolis to St. Louis, I was sure they would feature a stop in Des Moines. To my dismay, they didn’t.

I’m no art critic and certainly no curator, but I have a high opinion of the Art Center and took offense that the Journal skipped it. I googled “best of” and “top” museum lists to see where others rank us, but came up empty. I concluded that either I know absolutely nothing about art, or those who do know absolutely nothing about Des Moines.