Research notes for project planning
What the project record tells us
Three completed 2019 installations and their shared narrative.
A story connects dispersed sculptures
Bernheim records three giants built for its ninetieth anniversary in 2019 using recycled wood from the region. The figures belong to a family within a fairytale written by Dambo, giving separate sites a shared narrative. This is a useful precedent for commissioning beyond a single landmark: material collection, placement and interpretation contribute to one visitor journey. A planning team can ask how much of the story needs to be understood at each encounter and what links are carried by trails, signs or programming.
Bernheim — Forest Giants in a Giant Forest ↗ · Reviewed 2026-10-10
For your project briefHow will separate sculpture sites communicate a shared story without requiring every visitor to follow the same route?
Big Art Partners planning prompt Temporary exhibition, 2018–2020; no current-display claim.
Scale includes the path to discovery
Troll Hunt at the Morton Arboretum ran from 2018 until June 2020 and used reclaimed wood for six large figures. The institution describes both tall standing forms and a much longer reclining one across the grounds. Their different orientations suggest that a sculpture’s useful footprint includes the surrounding space from which it can be discovered and understood. For a landscape exhibition, that makes terrain, approach and viewing distance part of early planning, alongside the dimensions of the fabricated object itself.
Morton Arboretum — Troll Hunt ↗ · Reviewed 2026-10-10
For your project briefWhat approach and viewing space does each figure need in addition to its physical footprint?
Big Art Partners planning prompt Practice-level workshop and recycled-material context.
A workshop supports a dispersed practice
Dambo’s biography describes a workshop and creative hub on a farm near Copenhagen, alongside a practice built around recycled materials and collaborative making. That production setting is relevant when interpreting photographs of sculptures in distant landscapes: the completed encounter is only one stage in a larger process. For a prospective project, a useful early discussion would distinguish work prepared by the established workshop from tasks tied to local material collection and onsite assembly, while leaving the actual division of labor for project-specific confirmation.
Thomas Dambo — About ↗ · Reviewed 2026-10-10
For your project briefWhich fabrication tasks belong in the established workshop and which depend on local materials or onsite conditions?
Big Art Partners planning prompt 