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All the United States Washington Seattle Neukom Vivarium
AO Edited

Neukom Vivarium

A rotting tree in the middle of Seattle doubles as an elaborately-controlled art piece.

Seattle, Washington

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Rebekah Otto
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Neukom Vivarium   Liv Estberger / CC BY 2.0
  Vmenkov / CC BY-SA 3.0
Neukom Vivarium   Glenn Fleishman / CC BY 2.0
Neukom Vivarium   Joe Wolf / CC BY-ND 2.0
Vivarium entrance   Joe Wolf / CC BY-ND 2.0
Neukom Vivarium   Joe Wolf / CC BY-ND 2.0
  Dale Simonson / CC BY-SA 2.0
View if the glass ceiling of the Neukom Vivarium   wekanz 6d2c68e9 / Atlas Obscura User
Neukom with a view. The Space Needle keeps watch over the Neukom Vivarium.   wekanz 6d2c68e9 / Atlas Obscura User
ā€œIts a Memento Mori an Appreciation of Decayā€   ickaimp / Atlas Obscura User
Plaque for Neukom Vivarium   ickaimp / Atlas Obscura User
  Aty Trocious / Atlas Obscura User
Open Saturdays and Sundays   ickaimp / Atlas Obscura User
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About

Exploring the woods inevitably involves detritus: a broken branch decaying on the ground, leaves slowly turning to dust, pine cones gone to seed. Perhaps you've stumbled across a behemoth of a once-tree, felled by lightning or creeping, internal rot.

In Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park, you'll find sculptures by modern masters like Claes Oldenburg and Richard Serra, but you'll also find another more unusual work of art: a rotting tree. It's slowly rotting, in a controlled environment called the Nekoum Vivarium. (Vivarium means "a place of life" in Latin.)

The tree in the sculpture park is not entirely sculpture nor nature but is perhaps a mixture of both—natural decay under the careful gaze of the artist. This western hemlock lived its life in the Green River Watershed and was brought, with permission of the state, to the Olympic Sculpture Park in 2006.

The vivarium was the vision of artist-cum-arborist Mark Dion. As he put it: "In some ways, this project is an abomination. We’re taking a tree that is an ecosystem—a dead tree, but a living system—and we are re-contextualizing it and taking it to another site." Dion had to figure out how to effectively build a substitute for the natural environment. which was incredibly complicated and expensive. "Despite all of our technology and money," he said, "when we destroy a natural system it’s virtually impossible to get it back. In a sense, we’re building a failure."

The display includes magnifying glasses to examine the rot and a chalkboard for lessons on trees. The room is open whenever a volunteer staffer is there. The vivarium is in a nine-acre park on the Seattle waterfront, adjacent to Myrtle Edwards Park.

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Greenhouses Sculpture Gardens Horticulture Ruins Plants

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Rebekah Otto

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Blindcolour, tjmuehleman, ickaimp, Aty Trocious...

  • Blindcolour
  • tjmuehleman
  • ickaimp
  • Aty Trocious
  • Michelle Cassidy
  • wekanz 6d2c68e9

Published

December 13, 2009

Updated

April 7, 2023

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Sources
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Sculpture_Park
  • http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/visit/OSP/
  • https://art21.org/read/mark-dion-neukom-vivarium/
Neukom Vivarium
2901 Western Avenue
Seattle, Washington, 98121
United States
47.616282, -122.353717
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