The McKinley Village Art Walk

Parks & Streets at McKinley Village Named for Artists and Arts Leaders

The McKinley Village Art Walk celebrates Sacramento’s diverse, distinct, and acclaimed art community. This privately funded collaboration between the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission and the McKinley Village development team features a journey of exploration consisting of sculptures, interactive art installations, and exhibitions that animate this urban village’s streets, parks, and common areas, while honoring Sacramento’s rich artistic past and present.

The McKinley Village Art Walk features ten works of public art; five parks named to honor Sacramentans who have made substantial contributions to the arts; 10 streets named for artists, now deceased, who helped define and shape Sacramento’s art scene; and the local art work in the McKinley Village Clubhouse. The McKinley Village Way underpass at the entrance to the neighborhood features multi-colored LED lights that illuminate the underpass for pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers.

The project’s art program is unique to the Sacramento region. The artworks in McKinley Village inspire a journey by bike or by foot, a reason to pause and reflect, to gather and interact with friends and neighbors, and to encounter the ideas of Sacramento artists.

McKinley Village is graced at its eastern entrance by an 18-foot-high honed stainless steel sculpture of tree leaves emerging from the ground. Titled “La Feuille” or “The Leaf," the sculpture by Marc Foster pays homage to Sacramento’s long-standing identity as the City of Trees. At the western entrance to the neighborhood, a full-scale tractor painted by Jeff Myers is a reminder of the area’s agricultural roots. Seven other outdoor art installations - from a giant, bejeweled ring by Brenda Louie at the center of an intimate park, to two abstract paintings and a table by Hearne Pardee that create an outdoor picnic and dining area, to a sculpture by Suzanne Adan in a residential courtyard – enliven the common areas located throughout the community.

Under the leadership of the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission and its former executive director Shelly Willis, a panel from the Sacramento community guided the selection of artwork and the development of designs. The panel included renowned Sacramento artist Wayne Thiebaud; former Sacramento Mayor Burnett Miller; Inside Publications publisher and former Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commissioner Cecily Hastings; and three members of the McKinley Village development team: Phil Angelides and Megan Norris of Riverview Capital Investments and Aaron Sussman of The New Home Company.