Brit Fontenot, assistant to the Bozeman city manager, said the Bozeman City Commission and Library Board have given the project the go-ahead.
Now that plans for a rotating sculpture exhibit outside the Bozeman Public Library have been approved by the city, organizers are trying to raise $49,000 to get it started.
"The first construction phase will be to build nine viewing areas and pedestals for the sculptures," Zak Zakovi, a local sculptor and director of the Bozeman Sculpture Park project, said this week. "Eventually, it will fill out at 24 viewing areas and pedestals."
The Bozeman Sculpture Park will be set up along the asphalt stretch of the Bozeman Trail behind the library that leads to Peets Hill.
"It provides another reason for artists and art lovers to come to the community of Bozeman," Fontenot said. "It's a great accent for the library and it utilizes a very well traveled pathway."
The library already has several sculptures out front and the park project will continue that theme, Library Director Alice Meister said.
"I'm just very excited that we've gotten to the point to be able to move ahead with fundraising so that we could have an exhibit out there next year," Meister said.
Zakovi, who helped create the Emerson Center for the Arts and Culture, said the park will be the first in Montana to feature rotating exhibits of outdoor sculpture.
"There will be work by local, regional, even international artists," he said.
Zakovi said schoolchildren and university students will be invited to take field trips to the exhibit and hear the artists talk about their work.
The Bozeman Sculpture Park project received its nonprofit status last month. Organizers plan to send out about 80 fundraising letters to key contributors in the coming weeks. They are hoping other people who hear about the effort will donate, too.
In addition to paying for the viewing areas, the $49,000 will fund a curator to organize the first exhibit, stipends for the selected artists and an opening event, Zakovi said.
Organizers hope to open the first exhibit in the summer of 2011.
From the Bozeman Daily Chronicle