Art in the Park--and More in Raleigh

It’s an outdoor cinema. It’s a concert venue. It’s a sandbox. It’s a history museum. It’s a work of art.

In short, it’s the Museum Park. The unusual 2 1/2-acre park, opened this spring, spells out “PICTURE THIS” in 80-foot-long letters outside the North Carolina Museum of Art, in west Raleigh.

Nestled among and around the letters are a 600-seat live-performance amphitheater, open-air seating for several hundred more, an outdoor movie screen, facsimiles of ethnic and other historic markers in the state, a sandbox for kids and steel plaques with provocative quotes--including a gentle swipe at the state’s tobacco industry (“The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.”--Ralph Waldo Emerson).

Admission is free to both the museum and the park (designed by three architects and artist Barbara Kruger). They are open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday; closed Monday. Concert tickets are generally $10 and up, and movie tickets are $3. August is devoted to art exhibits, films and concerts on rock-and-roll. Information: (919) 839-6262.