Golf gets a new spin this summer when the Boca Raton Museum of Art’s exhibition “Big Art: Miniature Golf” takes over the museum’s first floor main gallery. Part art, part recreation, all fun, “Big Art: Miniature Golf” takes traditional miniature golf, with its infuriating windmills and oversized clowns, and turns it on its ear, with some extreme and artful examples of how mini-golf can unlock a players' imagination, making the felt fairways much more than just a game.
“Big Art” is not just some ingenious ploy to get kids in the museum this summer by tricking them into enjoying the world of art. It's a way to make art more accessible by showing the process of merging art, design and function into a tangible and fun experience. “Big Art” literally brings art to life, turning the museum’s gallery into a full-fledged miniature golf course. Designed by artists from around the United States, 11 golf holes go from render to reality, making for playable art with guests welcomed and encouraged to tee up and try their hand at scoring some birdies.
The indoor setting allows the creative team at the Boca Museum to use more “weather-sensitive” materials than the all-too-common roadside miniature golf courses. This allows for more intricate and inventive construction of these monolithic structures of artful recreation, keeping closely in line with the artist’s original idea. The “Tiger Woods” hole, a Thunder Cats-esque monument of a tiger devouring a golf ball, is sure to be a fan favorite, while the solar hole “Toward the Black Hole” will have visitors remembering their elementary school dioramas of the solar system (My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas, indeed—in my book, Pluto is still a planet, scientists!). Other holes making “Big Art” a big success will be “A Hole,” which finds golfers putting inside a giant golf hole cup; the “World’s Smallest Version of the World’s Largest Miniature Golf Course,” which is a bit of a mouthful but a lot of fun, in which golfers play a miniature mini-golf course with tiny clubs; and the regionally appropriate “Golf in the Swamp with John Muir,” which sets golfers playing through with a common reptilian hazard out on the links.
- “Big Art: Miniature Golf” opens July 18 and runs through October 7. Museum guests are encouraged to cut loose and putt a few around the greens, giving new meaning to functional art.
501 Plaza Real
Boca Raton, FL 33432
561-392-2500
