History of the Park

Caponi Art Park and Learning Center began as an outdoor laboratory to teach and demonstrate how creativity is a necessary part of daily living. In making the Art Park, Anthony Caponi, park founder, sculptor and retired professor, used this philosophy to organically integrate art, life and nature into a 60-acre sculpture. The Art Park is an extension of Caponi's teachings which emphasize the role art and creative expression play in the well-being of the individual and community.

For more than 40 years, Caponi devoted himself to developing the 60-acre site as a center for the arts, a place where both the visual and performing arts could be presented and fostered in a natural setting. Recognizing the power of nature to inspire, long before ecology or environmental education became important, Caponi planted hundreds of trees on the land to stop erosion caused by a county highway. He brought his students from the city to learn from nature and translate their experience into artwork. That was just the beginning. With the encouragement of local government and residents of the South-Metro area, the Caponi Art Park non-profit corporation was formed in 1992 to develop the park as a local and regional cultural resource and to make a contribution to the field of art on a national level.

Caponi Art Park opened in 1987 for tours and planned activities for schools and other organized groups. Since 1994 the Art Park has presented free activities and performances by the region's top artists. The Art Park has also hosted artists-in-residence and commissioned new theatrical and musical works over the years.