Tippet Rise Art Center Opens in Montana

Ensamble Studio (Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa), Inverted Portal, 2015.
Image courtesy of Tippet Rise/Iwan Baan.

Ensamble Studio (Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa), Beartooth Portal, 2015.
Image courtesy of Tippet Rise/Iwan Baan

Ensamble Studio (Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa), Inverted Portal (right) and Beartooth Portal (left), 2015.
Image courtesy of Tippet Rise / Iwan Baan

Domo, designed by Ensamble Studio (Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa), installed at Tippet Rise Art Center.
Photo © Andre Costantini

Mark di Suvero, Beethoven’s Quartet, 2003, Steel and stainless steel, 24 9/16 ft. x 30 ft. x 23 1/4 ft.
Image courtesy of Tippet Rise / Iwan Baan

Mark di Suvero, Proverb, 2002, painted Cor-ten steel, 60 ft. x 17 11/16 ft. x 31 1/2 ft.
Image courtesy of Tippet Rise / Iwan Baan

Patrick Dougherty, Daydreams, 2015, locally sourced willow saplings and sticks. (School house in collaboration with JXM & Associates LLC and CTA architects.)
Image courtesy of Tippet Rise/ Djuna Zupancic

Image of work in progress. Stephen Talasnik, Satellite No. 5: Pioneer, 2015. Yellow cedar with steel footings. 35’ in height with a footprint of 25’ x 40'.
Image courtesy of Tippet Rise/Erik Petersen

Alexander Calder, Two Discs, 1965, installed at Tippet Rise Art Center. On loan from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
Photo © Andre Costantini

The Tiara at Tippet Rise Art Center, Design by Alban Bassuet and Willem Boning, with Arup Engineers. Lead Architect: Gunnstock Timber Frames.
Image courtesy of Tippet Rise

The Olivier Music Barn at Tippet Rise Art Center.
Photo © Erik Petersen

The Olivier Music Barn at Tippet Rise Art Center.
Photo © Andre Costantini












After years of planning (and a not insignificant amount of imagination), philanthropists Cathy and Peter Halstead have transformed an 11,500-acre Montana sheep ranch into Tippet Rise Art Center, a sculpture park and performance space that hopes to offer new ways of engaging with both art and nature.
The Tippet Rise ranch is located in a largely untouched part of the state, over an hour southwest of Billings and two hours north of Yellowstone National Park. The expansive site contains multiple performance spaces, including a 150-seat music barn and an open-air “Tiara”—the partial ceiling of which captures and redirects sound toward the audience.
The center also features several pieces of large-scale sculpture: most notably, three monumental rocklike sculptures by Madrid- and Boston-based Ensamble Studio and a temporary installation of two works by Alexander Calder. The structures throughout the park are intended to be both functional and inspired by the natural environment around them, blurring the line between performance venues, contemporary sculpture, and landscape.
Tippet Rise opens today with a recital by pianist Nikolai Demidenko and will continue to host concerts and performances for the rest of the summer.
“We are about to have the pure joy of opening Tippet Rise by adding the only element that’s still missing: the public,” said Cathy and Peter Halstead in a release.