Reflections on the Tragedy of
The Great Southwest
Industrial Park
Sculpture
John Howett
The 3,000 acre Atlanta Gateway
Park on Fulton Industrial Boulevard,
two miles off U.S. Interstate 20, near
Six Flags over Georgia, opened
November 1, 1968, as the Great
Southwest Industrial Park. At the
time of the opening approximately
300 acres had been developed over a
two year period of construction based
on a design by Dallas landscape
architect J.O. Lambert with buildings
coordinated in color and materials by
Josef Albers. Although few Atlantans
seem to know or care, the Park in
cluded thirty pieces of contemporary
sculpture, and there were plans to
acquire 1,000 over a ten year period.
Even with the first thirty pieces
installed for the opening, the Great
Southwest Industrial Park was the
largest public collection of monumen
tal contemporary sculpture in the
world. The names of the artists read
like a Who’s Who of the 1960’s:
Donald Judd, Sol Lewitt, Beverly
Pepper, Kenneth Snelson, Peter
Forakis, Forest Myers, Tal Streeter,
Mon Levinson, Robert Murray,
Lyman Kipp, Will Insley and on and
Art Papers September-October 1981
on. A few local artists were pur
chased. Dorothy Berge had a piece in
the original thirty.
The project of combining the Great
Southwest Industrial Park with Six
Flags over Georgia was the brainchild
of the entrepreneur from Dallas,
Angus Gilchrist Wynne, Jr.. Wynne
chose the late Douglas MacAgy,
Associate Director of the N.E.A. and
former Director of the Dallas
Museum for Contemporary Art, to
select the sculpture for his industrial
park. Gudmund Vigtel, Director of
the High Museum of Art in Atlanta,
was one of the consultants assisting
MacAgy.
Wynne envisioned a 3,000 acre
industrial park of looping boulevards
embracing grassy knolls with coor
dinated buildings as background for
contemporary sculpture. At the same
time, he planned Six Flags Over
Georgia (as he had in Texas) to bring
crowds of people for entertainment
who would also visit the sculpture
park. It was a true vision of the six
ties: private enterprise and art work
ing together (while we destroyed the
enemy of this capitalist paradise in far
away Viet Nam). Since President
Reagan seems to have a similar nos
talgic dream, what happened to the
Great Southwest Industrial Park may
be a timely lesson in the pitfalls of art
dependent upon private enterprise
(while we pour money into weapons
to defend the dream).
By 1971, barely five years after the
Park opened, it was taken over by
MGIC Investment Corporation in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In the ten
years since that company has been in
charge of what is now called The
Atlanta Gateway Park, it is obvious
that only profits matter and that the
vision of Angus Wynne was not trans
ferred. The park has expanded to at
least triple its size in 1968, but, in spite
of the fact that the new owners use a
more euphemistic name, dropping the
word “industrial” and referring
directly to the large sculpture by Peter
Forakis, Gateway, 1967, both in their
logo and title, they do not seem to
care at all for the art nor the design of
the park as it was originally conceiv
ed. Today trucks rumble through
weed-grown, trash-strewn lots with
empty pedestals and rusted hulks of
once splendid works of art. The
“park” has become a dead place, a
cemetary of late sixties’ Minimalism.
Perhaps the death of the park has
been foreshadowed. The Atlanta
Gateway Park is built on the site of a
pre-Columbian Hopewell Indian set
tlement discovered at the turn of the
century. Emory and Tulane both have
artifacts taken from this site which is
now preserved in asphalt. Further
more, near the center of the original
300 acre development earth digging
machines had scooped around an old
Protestant graveyard leveling the
ground below but leaving the high hill
where the dead are buried stranded
and looking like an apple core chewed
all around with the grave stones and a
few trees occupying the stem end. It
would seem that the historical func
tion of the place is consistent with its
current evolution into a contem
porary cultural burial site.
Opening night in 1968 was,
however, alive and the most elaborate
and gala affair of its kind in Atlanta
since Gone With the Wind. The
people-mover trains from Six Flags
were pressed into service at the park
to take visitors from sculpture to
sculpture between tents lavish with
food and drink while search lights
illuminated the festivities and swept
the evening sky.
Peter Forakis’ giant red triangular
pipe piece had been commissioned to
span the main entrance. Just inside on
the grassy parkway was a Michael
Steiner which is gone now. The MGIC
people have sold some pieces and
hauled some away to their homebase
in Milwaukee. These, of course, have
turned out to be the luckier ones since
those that remain have been neglected
and vandalized. An historian cannot
help associating this with Lord Elgin
looting the Parthenon and shipping
pieces of it to London in 1802, while
