Explore Oakton’s outdoor sculptures with Vamonde

Oakton Community College’s Koehnline Museum of Art is utilizing a new tool for visitors to enjoy the sculpture park at the Des Plaines campus, 1600 E. Golf Road. By downloading the free Vamonde phone app from Apple’s App Store or the Google Play Store, art aficionados can take a self-guided walking tour of the campus outdoor sculpture collection.

“The new app will enable us to use a social network technology, which is a familiar territory with students and the general public, to connect them with Oakton’s artistic campus environment,” says Nathan Harpaz, museum manager and curator. “Vamonde also will attract visitors from the community at large to enjoy and benefit from our unique sculpture park.”

The Vamonde app is equipped with GPS maps, images and text, allowing Oakton visitors to tour more than 20 outdoor sculptures produced mainly by Chicago-area artists, including Virginio Ferrari, Terrence Karpowicz, Barry Tinsley, Jerry Peart, John Kearney, Ted Sitting Crow Garner, Mike Baur, Brian Monaghan, Corinne D. Peterson, Jason Verbeek, Eric Lindsey, Dessa Kirk, Judy Robins, Ruth Aizuss Migdal, Fisher Stolz, Michael Grucza, Austin Collins and Michael Brown.

App users will also find two works by Egon Weiner in the sculpture park. The two pieces are part of “Sculpting a Chicago Artist – Richard Hunt and his teachers: Nelli Bar and Egon Weiner,” a Koehnline exhibit which runs from July 12 through Sept. 14. The exhibition is part of Art Design Chicago, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art exploring Chicago’s art and design legacy, with presenting partner, The Richard H. Dreihaus Foundation.

Vamonde uses a smartphone’s location to guide users along the tour, bringing the content to life as multimedia experiences complete with information about the works of art, the artists and the context of the pieces.

“This is going to be an incredible opportunity with unlimited potential,” Harpaz adds. “Vamonde is an extremely user-friendly program.”

The museum hopes to eventually add content for a tour of the Skokie campus outdoor sculptures to the app.