A new three-acre sculpture park design for Louisville, Kentucky’s Speed Art Museum has been unveiled by Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture in a preview of the project, which is expected to host some 500,000 visitors a year after it opens in 2025.

The firm’s $22 million Speed Outdoors makeover will recreate an area surrounding the museum with native flora, a water management system, and 150 new trees in coordination with the adjacent University of Louisville and with a 13-artwork bequest from local collectors. 

The Museum’s Director, Raphaela Platow, said it will also instill Frederick Law Olmsted’s "dream of a Louisville connected by public parklands" while serving as a "welcoming forum for the whole community to connect with art, nature, and each other for generations to come."

The sculptural work of Zaha Hadid, Sol LeWitt, Kulapat Yantrasast, and Deborah Butterfield will feature prominently among the outdoor sculptures, which is meant to be open and ungated year-round. Rest areas combine with children’s play spaces to enhance the public domain in the neighborhood considered to be one the most diverse in the city. 

Platow added: "The Speed Outdoors represents our vision for a museum shaped by dedication to inclusivity, belonging, and boundless forms of creativity."

Reed Hilderbrand also recently won a 2023 World Landscape Architecture Award of Excellence for its Houston Arboretum and Nature Center collaboration with Design Workshop, Inc. and will soon complete work on the landscape exterior of Penn State University's Palmer Art Museum expansion, which is expected to open early next year.