On a Saturday morning in late July, about 50 people gathered by a pond at Benson Sculpture Garden to dedicate a bronze Claude Monet. He sits at an easel above water dotted with lily pads and framed by reeds, painting a view that recalls his gardens in Giverny. The seat beside him on the bench is empty on purpose.
The sculptor, Gary Lee Price, told the Loveland Reporter-Herald why that space matters to him.
"The whole purpose of the Great Contributors is that we have all these role models that we put up on these giant pedestals and almost worship. So my idea was to bring these giant people like Monet down to earth, put them on a bench where we can sit with them, converse with them, meditate with them, laugh with them, whatever."
The piece is called Great Contributors Monet. The money that paid for it was spent on the same grass a year earlier, during the 2025 Sculpture in the Park sale. For anyone living around Rist Benson Reservoir, that's the most useful thing to know about the garden off W. 29th Street. The collection grows a piece at a time, and the August weekend that clogs local parking pays for each new piece.
A collection paid for one August at a time
Benson Sculpture Garden sits at 1125 W. 29th Street, at the corner of Beech Drive, across from Loveland High School. The City of Loveland describes walking paths, park benches, ponds and more than 150 sculptures, all free to walk through. It's in the same northwest Loveland street grid as Rist Benson Reservoir, which the USGS Loveland quadrangle map places among W. 29th Street, W. 22nd Street, N. Taft Avenue and N. Wilson Avenue.
The garden's permanent collection doesn't wait for a city budget line. The High Plains Arts Council runs Sculpture in the Park, and it says show proceeds pay for Benson sculpture purchases, capital improvements and landscaping. The City's garden page says the council makes the art selections. As the Reporter-Herald reported in June, permanent Benson additions go through a competitive two-tier jury.
- Work sold at the 2025 Sculpture in the Park show brought in proceeds for the High Plains Arts Council.
- The council used those proceeds to buy Great Contributors Monet.
- The council donated the sculpture to the City of Loveland for placement at Benson.
- It was installed beside a pond and formally dedicated on Saturday, July 25, 2026.
Jade Windell, the arts council's executive director, told the Reporter-Herald that dedications let people connect with an artist. "People want to hear you," she said. "They want to hear why. They want to hear your voice."
The scale of the weekend that pays for it
The show behind all this is big. The 42nd Sculpture in the Park ran Aug. 7, 8 and 9, 2026, with more than 160 juried artists, according to the Reporter-Herald's preview. In coverage published during the show, the Reporter-Herald said the event was "expected to bring 8,000 visitors to Benson Sculpture Garden and raise around $1.6 million for the High Plains Art Council."
Those were projections made before the weekend ended. The firmer number from that coverage is the early one. There was "$720,000 in art already sold by the time the show opened its doors to the broader public Saturday morning." So nearly half of the projected total had sold before the general public walked in.
It helps to remember how the garden started. The Benson family donated part of their farm to the City in 1961, and that land is now the sculpture garden and the habitat around it. In 2015 the garden expanded across 29th Street with three sculptures, and the council says more than 15 pieces now stand in that section, with landscaping added in 2018. The donated farm ground keeps changing because the show keeps paying for new work.
Two benches, one sculptor, 25 years apart
Monet is the second Price sculpture to become a permanent part of Benson. The first is Circle of Peace, a ring of children holding hands, installed in 2001 and close to the new piece. You can now see 25 years of one artist's work within a short walk.
Price lives in Springville, Utah. His Great Contributors series honors figures including Harriet Tubman, Amelia Earhart, Abraham Lincoln, the Wright brothers and St. Francis. He told the dedication crowd that each piece in the series usually takes about a year of research. Monet took closer to two, because the work included a visit to the painter's home and gardens in Giverny. That trip helps explain why the pond setting at Benson matters to the piece.
Monet also connects to Price's own early plans. "I graduated with a degree in painting and drawing, and thought I'd be a professional portrait painter," he told the Reporter-Herald. He moved to sculpture after working for a sculptor during his last year of college, saying that creating in three dimensions "was like coming home."
The money loop runs through Price as well. He planned to come back to Sculpture in the Park in August 2026 after an absence of five or six years, bringing nine or 10 pieces. An artist whose work was bought with one show's proceeds was selling at the next one, helping fund whatever the council buys next.
What's already scheduled for the lawn
Monet was one of two sculptures the High Plains Arts Council bought in 2026. The second, The Wild Table of Love, is set to be installed at Benson Sculpture Garden in 2027. So next year's new arrival has already been chosen, even though the 2026 show is still recent.
Proceeds from this August's sale go back into the same pot for future purchases and garden upkeep, as the council describes it. The dedication timeline gives a sense of the pace. Money from the 2025 show turned into a bench with a bronze painter on it by July 2026. The pieces paid for by this year's show will show up the same way, one dedication at a time.
Visiting once the group tours stop
Fall and winter work differently at Benson, and the details matter if the garden is part of your regular walk.
- Guided tours stop for the season. The council offers a limited number of free scheduled tours for groups of 10 or more, asks for a month's notice, and doesn't run tours from November through March.
- The map works year-round. A self-guided map of the collection is free to download from the council's site. The current version is marked as revised in May 2025.
- Restroom hours change seasonally. According to the City's garden page, portable restrooms come out for the season starting November 3, and the flush restrooms switch to daily winter hours of 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Parking is tight all year. The City notes limited parking and doesn't allow large group or special event reservations at the garden. The gazebo seats up to 48 and can be reserved for smaller gatherings, though not during Sculpture in the Park.
With the August crowds gone and scheduled tours pausing in November, the walking paths and ponds stay open at no cost through the cold months.
I love that the newest piece in our corner of Loveland asks you to stop and sit for a while. If you live near Rist Benson Reservoir and want to talk about the places that make this part of town feel like home, Kristin Tibbs would be glad to meet you, maybe even on that bench. Let's Connect.
