The museum garden with its spacious lawns and paved paths was largely part of the historic villa and still has remnants of the former fencing and old trees. Over the course of time, it was designed with monumental sculptures, primarily works of so-called Concrete Art from the 1970s to 1990s. Their placement creates a harmonious coexistence of art, nature and architecture that actively involves walkers.
‘My works are objects in space, reflectors of light and instruments of movement. Time is visible in their rhythmic structures,’ says Heinz Mack about his works. Personal contacts between the founder Theodor F. Leifeld and him led to the purchase of five sculptures by the well-known ZERO artist in the mid-1990s – the start of the sculpture garden. The Lichtturm, which is over 3 metres high, attracts visitors with its mirror effects visible from afar. One inside the other. Spotlights inside transform the tower into a light sculpture at night. The reflective Zick-Zack-Stele on the banks of the river Werse appears like an immaterial trail of light in the incident sunlight, travelling upwards towards the sky. Mack's stone sculptures, massive blocks that he shapes and opens with diagonal incisions, appear more down-to-earth, creating impressive light and shadow drawings, as in Rhythmus und Gelassenheit.
Light and movement also play an important role in three other steel sculptures. Raumplastik IV by William Brauhauser and Peter Schwickerath's Durchdringung I/79 consist of cylindrical forms that correspond with the circular lines of the garden. The two-part work by Dortmund artist Horst Linn shows that a simple folding principle can certainly lead to challenges. How is it possible for the two four-metre-high stainless-steel panels to stand both straight and at an angle? Powerful and at the same time floating, Robert Schad's Knyrgel develops the dance-like movement so typical of his works by constantly changing direction. Almost like a ‘drawing in space’. The bronze sculpture Panther by Felicitas Lensing-Hebben shows a statuesque yet moving figure that seems surreal in view of the title.
The Sliding Colours garden gate by Christoph Dahlhausen combines functionality with artistic self-confidence. The narrow acrylic glasses with different colour saturations form a rhythmically designed colour sequence about 10 metres long. On the front side of the museum, four open cube fragments, Günther Zins Auftauchen und Versinken, appear to break through the masonry of the historic villa. Here, ‘art in architecture’ becomes an imaginative interaction between sculpture and architecture: a game of being and appearance.