The Stone Sculpture Park

In 1968 the stone sculptors Kubach-Wilmsen set up their open-air studio in Bad Münster am Stein-Ebernburg, against the spectacular backdrop of the Rotenfels rock face. Virtually their entire oeuvre has been created within this landscape. In 2001 they began transforming the abandoned vineyards around their studio into a Stone Sculpture Park open to the public.

To visitors and viewers, this unspoilt countryside studded with stone sculptures unfolds like a stone mosaic crafted by the Earth herself. 13 out of altogether 24 sculptures have already found their place in this landscape. The sculptures testify to the evolution of their material on every continent. The history of stone is visualized in a new context in the atmospheric light of the wine-making Nahe valley.

Earth and stone are inseparably linked to the history of the formation of the Earth’s crust. Worldwide, however, the past century has seen stone divided from earth, the countryside cleared, food production facilities cultivated, and our rocky crags industrialised as road stone and prefabricated slabs.

The Stone Sculpture Museum and open-air Stone Sculpture Park in Bad Münster am Stein-Ebernburg seek to re-forge the age-old connection between earth and stone. For sculptors Wolfgang Kubach and Anna Kubach-Wilmsen, stone is no longer the material of form. Instead, forms sourced from our cultural history – books and newspapers, for example – become the media through which we look at stone. STONE is matter, and thus each stone is a relic from the evolutionary history of our planet. The whole of our past is laid down in stone and becomes the present.

The Stone Sculpture Museum in Bad Münster am Stein-Ebernburg is the first and currently the only museum of modern stone sculpture in the world. Through the museum’s activities, stone is to be allowed to assert its place not just in the surrounding landscape, but likewise in the art scene. The natural geology of the Nahe valley, dominated by the Rotenfels, the tallest rock face between the North Sea and the Alps, could not provide a better setting. Within this magnificent ambiance, the visitor is invited to enter into a dialogue with the stone sculptures by Kubach-Wilmsen and Kubach-Kropp in the Stone Sculpture Park and within the museum complex designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando. The open-air park comprises some four acres of land, formerly occupied by seven north-facing vineyards that became victims of the 2001 law on wine. The slopes once under vines today flourish as a single space and write stories of stone onto the landscape, accessible to all.

Linking the Stone Sculpture Park with the museum building is the Land Mark footpath. A range of weathered slabs of earth’s stone crust from every continent have been

    broken

    drilled

    dynamited

    hammered

and combined into a path running north-south.

Please support the museum by sponsoring a stone sculpture. Sponsored sculptures remain on permanent loan to the museum and Stone Sculpture Park and carry the name of their sponsor on their signage.

Located in the immediate vicinity of the museum are the studio and sculpture garden of the artist couple Kubach & Kropp   www.kubach-kropp.de