Just north of Yellowstone, between Bozeman and Billings, Montana lies Tippet Rise Art Center. Perhaps an unexpected place for a budding world-class art, architecture and classical music venue, the 12,500 acre working ranch pairs art with sheep and cattle. Tippet Rise was founded by Cathy and Peter Halstead in 2016 and is seasonally open to the public via an online reservation system. Visitors can bike, hike or ride a courtesy shuttle that navigates the miles of roads between installations. Artists include Alexander Calder, Ensamble Studio, Francis Kéré, Ai Weiwei, Patrick Dougherty, Mark di Suvero, and Stephen Talasnik among others. 

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I have had the privilege of visiting twice. The first time was in the August of 2017, when the grass was dry and the sky was filled with smoke from the seasonal wildfires. I was returning from a solo trip to Glacier National Park and stopped by on a whim, unaware of the reservation system and was thankfully told they had a single available time slot the next day. Without a bike and disinclined to ride the shuttle, I hiked close to 20 miles to prioritize a visit to each of the three concrete sculptures by Ensamble Studio, Beartooth Portal, Inverted Portal and The Domo. Approaching on foot, you can see them from miles away, each slowly revealed the closer you get. The creases left by the plastic sheeting that lined the concrete pours feel akin to stone and the forms and voids are as naturalistic as you will find in architecture– more canyon and cave than conventional space. The pièce de résistance of the trio is The Domo, which is large enough to hold small audiences for outdoor chamber concerts, its sheltered space informed by acoustics and framed views of the mountains beyond. An interesting detail (of which I cannot find any photographic evidence in my files) was a "graveyard" of concrete prototypes at some fraction of full scale that tested different compositions and massing of the built pieces and several unbuilt iterations– fossils of process.

 

My second visit to Tippet Rise was in June 2022 as the clouds gathered for what turned out to be historic rainfall and flooding in the surrounding region. With better planning this time, my wife and I spent time in Yellowstone, Red Lodge, Beartooth Pass and Absarokee on either end of the trip and camped along magical East Rosebud Creek. Four years on, the Ensamble trio seem ever more at home, any vestiges of the construction process all but erased by the seasons. New pieces since my last visit included "Xylem" by Pritzker Prize winning architect Francis Kéré and "Iron Tree" by Ai Weiwei, which was in the midst of being assembled. As Tippet Rise continues to grow their collection, I look forward to my next trips, revisiting the older installations as they age in place and welcoming the new additions. Perhaps some day we'll be lucky enough to add something to the artistic milieu....