Chapter 4: Culture As A Garden
That is until you start to explore places like the India Botanical Garden in Cleveland. A place created not only to exemplify culture of India nbut to bring beauty and prosperity to cleveland with its inclussion. In this Editorial it speaks on the idea of the cultural garden as many times when a cultural garden is established it is created for a reason, its creator puts a piece of themselves into the work and strives to create something that represents that culture in a light that will garner both respect and admiration from those who look on. Yet it also dwells in the idea that if not upkept the purpose of it its creation may deteriorate. “To the degree that the Gardens embodied their home city, they function like other works of public art and monuments, providing a lens through which to explore larger themes, revealing changing community values, power relations, institutions, and historical change.” (Sculpted Landscape, 329)
The specific garden referenced is the India Cultural Gardens, It was created originally as a means of the beautification of cleveland but as time marched on an the statue of ghandi was added eventually it gradually took on a roll as the aforementioned thought provoking location. “Cleveland Cultural Gardens as a lens through which to explore how have art and place have intersected over time: How did communities negotiate questions of national, ethnic, and American identity, and embed those identities into the vernacular landscape? To what degree is it possible for diverse groups to find and enact a common language when they create public art? “ (Sculpted Landscape, 329). It is places like these that really strike home the ideas of culture playing a roll in the space it occupies, it was cultivated into a display of art and culture that should provoke thought in the viewer, It should encourage cultural discovery and exemplify just what that culture is about.
