page_title: Sculpture in Scotland
section_title: Sculpture parks
hierarchical_section_title: Sculpture in Scotland / Sculpture parks
caption_attribution_description: English: "The Thinker", one of the sculptures in the Frank Bruce Sculpture Park, near Aviemore, Scotland.
context_page_description: Sculpture in Scotland includes all visual arts operating in three dimensions in the borders of modern Scotland. Durable sculptural processes traditionally include carving and modelling, in stone, metal, clay, wood and other materials. In the modern era these were joined by assembly by welding, modelling, moulding and casting. Some installation art can also be considered to be sculpture. The earliest surviving sculptures from Scotland are standing stones and circles from around 3000 BCE. The oldest portable visual art are carved-stone petrospheres and the Westray Wife is the earliest representation of a human face found in Scotland. From the Bronze Age there are extensive examples of rock art, including cup and ring marks and elaborate carved stone battle-axes. By the early Iron Age Scotland had been penetrated by the wider European La Tène culture, and a few examples of decoration survive from Scotland. There are also decorated torcs, scabbards, armlets and war trumpets. The Romans began military expeditions into what is now Scotland from about 71 CE, leaving a direct sculptural legacy of distance slabs, altars and other sculptures.
context_section_description: Although the first sculpture park in Scotland was established privately at Glenkiln, Dumfriesshire in 1955, it was in the late 1970s and 1980s that they began to be fully developed. The Scottish Sculpture Trust founded in 1978 established the Highland Sculpture Park that year. A similar project was soon begun at Glenshee. The Scottish Sculpture Workshop, begun by sculptor Fred Bushe (1931–2009) in 1979, organised the first Scottish Sculpture Open at Kildrummy Castle in 1981 in Aberdeenshire and it became an annual event. The Cramond Sculpture Park was set up in Edinburgh in 1985 to accommodate the mixed media work emerging from art schools in Scotland. The Highland Sculpture Park, Glenshee and Cramond all closed within a few years, but there are numerous other parks within Scotland. Current sculpture parks include:
  Art in Galloway Forest Park Programme
  Caol Ruadh Sculpture Park
  Frank Bruce Sculpture Trail
  Glenkiln Sculpture Park
  Gretna Green Sculpture Garden
  The Hidden Gardens
  Jupiter Artland
  Little Sparta
  Modern Art Galleries Sculpture Garden
  Place of Origin
  Scottish Sculpture Workshop: Sculpture Walk
  Striding Arches
  Tyrebagger Sculpture Project
caption: "The Thinker", one of the sculptures in the Frank Bruce Sculpture Park, near Aviemore
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