This August, Pamela Buckman retired from her role as Sculpture Garden Manager after 17 years of service. We recently spoke with Pamela about her time at NOMA, her first encounter with the Sculpture Garden, and more. Read the full interview below.

Q&A with Pam Buckman, Retired Besthoff Sculpture Garden Manager

Question

Can you tell me about the first time you visited the sculpture garden? 

Pam Buckman (PB)

I remember it perfectly: after Katrina, I spent a school year away because my son was a junior in high school. We went off to Charleston, South Carolina, where I had immediate family. I swam my way back to New Orleans in the summer of 2006. Prior to Katrina, I’d been working at the Audubon Zoo in horticulture. The gardens were all dead in New Orleans, and I didn’t have a place to live, so I ended up renting in the Esplanade apartments right across the street from the museum. I remember just kind of wandering over here and sitting on the granite out by the waterfall pool. Even though I’m a Lakefront 70124 ZIP code girl, I ended up becoming an Audubon Park girl as an adult. I had not really come back out to City Park and the garden area until then. 

Question

What are some things you’ve learned over the years through your role in the garden? 

PB

I learned about sculpture design and installation. I never realized that I would have a job like that. It was similar to when I worked at the zoo: I always thought of the zoo as a garden that just had some animals in it, and here at the museum, it was a garden that just had some sculpture in it, because my focus was always on the landscape, the plants, and the maintenance. Beyond that, I learned how to spin gold out of straw. After Katrina, the budget and resources were tight. People would ask me, “Where is your crew and your staff?”and I would say, “you’re looking at her!” I learned how to recruit staff through public service programs for people that were learning landscaping and horticulture. I just learned how to do it. I had worked with volunteers at Audubon Zoo, but this was a whole new ball game.

Question

Do you have a favorite work on view in the garden now? 

PB

I always like the Hepworth just because of its simple design, and I always liked the rubber Graham source figure, which initially was in the waterfall, the cascade pool. I felt that the image of the woman’s body was very normalized. 

Question

Do you have any favorite works on the new side of the garden? 

PB

I think the Yep behind the mirror labyrinth is so unique. And the glass bridge, obviously, is so unique, too. The diving board is really special with little boys on top.

Question

What are some ways the landscape of the garden has changed during your time? Obviously, it’s changed a great deal! 

PB

Yes! Loss of landscape came after Katrina, so I worked through repairing and replanting the garden my first couple of years here. Prior to my coming, the museum had gotten funding from the Getty for a massive treatment on those oak trees. Some other repairs didn’t happen until 2009. Until then, there was no infrastructure in the garden–no irrigation, no power. Fast forward to the garden expansion, and that was a whole different landscape: different designers, different focus, different themes, and more southern and native plants. The whole team really researched the history of City Park for the expansion. Another really special part of the garden landscape is a huge collection of Louisiana irises. Every single iris in the garden was donated by the Greater New Orleans Iris Society. There’s currently a lot of replanting and restructuring of the iris display garden happening under Thomas and the Irish Society’s direction, so that’s very exciting.

Question

Are there other parts of the landscape in the garden that you’re particularly proud of? 

PB

The expansion of the garden is the thing that’s really exciting. I let Thomas just roll with seeding different parts of the garden with Louisiana native plants. He created a real test ground there. It’s a process over several planting seasons to see what survives what doesn’t, and that has been a whole new world to me and something bad that I am very proud of. And the community’s response to it has been wonderful. There’s a uniqueness of having these natives and these different varieties of plants that flower at different times. 

One of my goals was always to keep the garden educational, because visitors are truly just as interested in the landscape as the sculptures. It is so unique for a sculpture garden to be in such a mature landscape, as opposed to on a grid with concrete. If you drive around neighborhoods in New Orleans and see what’s working in the shade in the sun, that’s really how you learn about native plants. It’s how I’ve learned, as well.

Question

What is something that visitors should not miss when they visit the garden? 

PB

I would have to say the Canal Bridge, the former Moses Bridge. It really is a unique feature, and it was the only option to keep the garden connected without having to exit the garden across the street. It was the most comprehensive, and probably most expensive and complicated design feature. When I see people coming in the garden and they kind of leave quickly,I’ll run out and ask, “did you catch the pathway to the other side?” We’re not really big on neon lit markers and all that, so there’s a very small marker, but I pretty much have trained the gallery attendants and the volunteers to remind people not to miss not to miss that passageway. If you miss that, then you miss 50% of the garden, whichever way you enter it.