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deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln is a 30-acre Sculpture Park featuring 60 modern and contemporary sculptures made by a diverse array of artists in a wide variety of materials, content, and scale. deCordova is surrounded by forested conservation lands that partner with the Sculpture Park to inspire the endless creativity and innovation of deCordova’s art and nature camps. In addition, our camps build on The Trustees’ expertise in nature conservation, collections care, and preservation and celebration of cultural heritage.

Camp Details

Every day, campers enjoy activities that align with our educational mission and environmental ethic. Inspired by a teaching philosophy based in inquiry, play, imagination, process over product, and a strong sense of place, camper creations embody creativity, curiosity, and community. Rather than campers sitting individually mastering techniques in a studio, they can be found experimenting with natural and unconventional materials together on a lawn or in the woods. As they make connections to their own lives, campers see the world in new ways, learn to collaborate and problem solve with others, and emerge transformed by a celebration of diversity.

The Hive (ages 5–12)
The Hive provides an ideal atmosphere for young explorers to make connections to contemporary art, artists, nature, and ideas as well as to each other. Using the studios as a home base, campers venture through the Sculpture Park and the natural landscape to discover how artists use artistic, scientific, and social tools to investigate ideas about self, community, and the environment.

A week at The Hive is more than artmaking. It’s about communicating, experimenting, seeing from new perspectives, and coming together as a group to design and construct collaborative sculptures. Each camper’s personal interests and unique abilities are welcomed and complement those of new friends while everyone learns from each other. The campers’ joyful pride in their collective accomplishments is shared with family and friends during each week’s Friday Celebration in the Sculpture Park.

Summer Studio for Teens (ages 13–16)
Summer Studio offers a space for participants to refine and expand techniques and explore new mediums as they dive into theme-inspired projects. They hone individual skills and their unique artistic voice while also collaborating on projects with peers inspired by sculptures in the 30-acre Park. Whether a participant is new to making at deCordova or a long-time Hive camper, each week will bring their creative endeavors to new heights in a weekly Studio Showcase of individual and collaborative projects.

deCordova Camps are designed for campers who love the outdoors, making things from unexpected art materials, using their imagination, being part of a collaborative community, and creatively expressing themselves. Passionate and experienced artists and art educators support campers and teens in taking on challenges, solving problems, discovering themselves, and delving into visual culture and the natural world.

• If you have any inquiries about whether your camper will thrive at deCordova Camps, please contact the camp office.

2025 Camp Schedule

FULL-DAY SESSIONS for Ages 5–12
Hive Junior Instructors for Ages 15–18

Week 1: July 7–11
Week 2: July 14–18
Week 3: July 21–25
Week 4: July 28–August 1
Week 5: August 4–8

SUMMER STUDIO FOR TEENS for Ages 13–16

Session 1: June 30–July 3 (Four days Monday–Thursday)
Session 2: August 11–15 (Five days Monday–Friday)

2025 Camp Pricing

The Hive for Ages 5–12
9:30AM–3:30PM
Trustees Member Camper: $610/week
Nonmember Camper: $690/week

Teen Summer Studio for Ages 13–16
11:30AM–4:30PM

Session 1 (Four Days)
Trustees Members: $365/week
Nonmembers: $455/week

Session 2 (Five Days)
Trustees Members: $455/week
Nonmembers: $535/week

The Hive Themes

Hive Week 1 Theme: Water as Sanctuary
Water connects us to the natural world and provides respite, is essential to the survival of people and plants, and molds and shapes geography and human life. How can we understand water’s impact and poetry, its presence and absence, through explorations in deCordova’s sculpture park? The flowing water in Ron Rudnicki’s Rain Gates catches light, reflects color, changes shape, and supports life. The water running through Andy Goldsworthy’s Watershed carves ravines and patterns as it meanders to the reservoir below. We will observe, collect, be inspired, and make exciting discoveries in the water sanctuaries of deCordova’s enchanting landscape!

Project: Inspired by Colombian-Cuban artist Evelyn Rydz’s Holding Water–a sculpture exploring the idea of a “water-caretaker”–campers will devise environmentally sustainable sculptures and landscape designs that creatively capture and utilize rain and water. In the making, campers will consider their own relationship to water, how its abundance or scarcity impacts communities, and how they can help protect water resources as citizen artists. A collaboratively constructed giant rain barrel sculpture could beautify the campus while collecting water that can be used for nearby plants or making the very paint used to adorn the sculpture.

Hive Week 2 Theme: Inside Out, Outside In: Structures, Perspectives, and Stories
Using Joiri Minaya’s artistic greenhouse, Tropticon, as a starting point, campers will explore inclusion, exclusion, and how we engage with land and community. Tropticon’s exterior of pixelated botanical images mask the structure’s interior like a one-way mirror, while its interior offers a clear, open view of deCordova’s New England landscape from which inhabitants can secretly survey their surroundings. Dan Graham’s Crazy Spheroid – Two Entrances glass sculpture allows visitors to see multiple, contorted reflections of themselves, others, and the landscape while both inside and outside its two glass rooms. Hugh Hayden’s slanted replica of Henry David Thoreau’s iconic cabin, Huff and a Puff, has mirrored windowpanes reflecting viewers and nature while preventing anyone from entering its distorted structure.

Project: Inspired by these artists who invite us to think about our place in the natural and built environment, campers will construct greenhouses with nature as both inspiration and medium. Material and construction considerations regarding entrances, exits, and access will prompt exploration of shifting perspectives from the inside looking out and the outside looking in. Enclosures could offer exposure or safety, isolation or belonging, for animals and humans depending on who or what is on the inside or outside and how or what materials are used.

Hive Week 3 Theme: Slow down, We Move Too Fast: Re-engaging our Senses
Mindful art making and focused nature exploration require us to slow down and pay attention to what we might otherwise overlook in our fast-paced lives. A Snail’s Pace is a giant translucent snail shell housing a life-sized female figure crouched protectively within. For artist Kathy Ruttenberg “The sculpture captures the moment of withdrawal when the cell phone is put down and the computer is unplugged . . . moving like a snail, protected from life’s hectic pace.” When we slow down, experience quiet, and allow space for all our senses, what new discoveries might we make? What could Joseph Wheelwright’s Listening Stone be hearing with its enormous right ear “attuned to the subtle sounds emitted from the earth below”? Through renewed attention to all five senses, we will create multisensory art that invites a re-engagement with the idea and practice of attention.

Project: Campers will construct an art village that welcomes visitors into a fully immersive, unhurried experience outside of our busy lives. Textures, smells, and sounds will add depth, dimension, and accessibility to understanding art, nature, and ourselves. We will creatively welcome and support animals, plants, and humans into the village by building inviting and inclusive structures and experiences with everyday objects and materials found in nature.

Hive Week 4 Theme: Community Art Garden of Unexpected Possibilities
When campers collaborate to envision a community art, plant, animal, and sculpture garden, the possibilities for creation, growth, and connection are as limitless as our imaginations. We will take inspiration from Venetia Dale’s pewter sculpture cast from fragments of house plants situated between “dead” trees that provide vital habitat for organisms, animals, and plants. William O’Brien’s bronze Sun & Moon Protector and Night Protector are “planted” amidst trees and grass that offer hope, healing, and protection for nature and her visitors. A stroll through deCordova’s own art garden of bronze sculptures, Alice’s Garden will provide ideas for pathways and the complex relationship between outdoor sculptures and the myriad plants and flowers that continually transform around them.

Project: Campers will brainstorm, design, and construct a community garden of unexpected possibilities dedicated to cultivating art. Campers will collect, gather, and process the blossoms and leaves that green the Sculpture Park, developing deep plant-human connection. As campers create and imagine the “crops” for their community garden, they will consider purpose, whimsy, and how the plots will all come together for possibilities of relaxation, growth, nourishment, and hope.

Hive Week 5 Theme: Vehicles for Voyage: A Journey of the Imagination
Vehicles, both symbolic and literal, can take us on inner journeys of the heart and on real trips. Taking inspiration from archeological ruins, Argentinian-born granite sculptor Carlos Dorrien’s Little Red Riding Hood and Other Stories features a door and a flying carpet installed on the precipice overlooking Flint’s Pond. Dedicating the fairy tale-titled work to his mother, “who taught me to fly without a carpet,” Dorrien offers multiple access points to the creative imagination. Jim Dine’s family tribute, Two Big Black Hearts with bronze casts of hands, faces, hammers, and other domestic objects are “vehicles of personal expression that evoke emotion” honoring the artist’s memories of his father and grandfather’s hardware store. For trips with physical destinations in mind, George Greenamyer’s eight-wheeled Mass Art Vehicle, perched on train tracks on a hill, will inspire ideas for vehicular travel.

Project: What vehicles and journeys will campers invent to both excavate memories and transport themselves to faraway places–both real and imagined? Campers will design and build mechanisms to transport them on inner and global journeys. Time travel machines, cars that can also ride in the air and sea, and portals to the past and future are just some possibilities for their quests!

Summer Studio Themes

Summer Studio Session 1: Water As Sanctuary
Following the same art inspiration and project ideas from Hive Week 1 above, participants will work in areas such as illustration, painting, collage, and printmaking to explore personal, community, and global impacts of the scarcity, abundance, and sanctuary of water.

Summer Studio Session 2: Inside Out, Outside In: Structures, Perspectives, and Stories
Following similar art inspiration and project ideas from Hive Week 2 above, participants will apply newfound skills in fiber arts, clay, and construction with natural materials to contemplate personal and social perspectives of inclusion, exclusion, and access.

Registration Information

Create or access your CampBrain account to register your camper. Here are some CampBrain Tips for navigating common sticking points during the process.

Payment & Financial Assistance
Payment is due in full by credit card or eCheck at time of registration to confirm your spot.

If you would like to arrange a payment plan or another form of payment, please contact the camp office to discuss options as early as possible.

The Trustees is committed to providing outdoor camp experiences for everyone. Obtain Financial Assistance information online or contact the camp office. Although spots are being held for eligible campers, we suggest you apply as early as possible as assistance is awarded on a rolling basis as space and funds allow.

Member Tuition Rate
deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is a property of The Trustees, a member-supported, nonprofit organization that protects and cares for 27,000 acres across Massachusetts. Trustees Family Members receive the $80 discounted tuition rate for each camper for each week of camp – plus free or discounted admission at 120+ special places, program discounts, and special event pre-sales all year round.

If you purchase or renew your Trustees membership as you register for camp, you will automatically be eligible for the Member tuition rate. Note: Memberships must be valid through August 2025.

Wait Lists
If any of your desired camp weeks are full, you will have the option to join the wait list as you register. Your credit card will not be charged for waitlisted sessions until you accept a spot that becomes available.

What You Need to Register
Please have the following ready to proceed to registration:

• Annual physical and immunization forms
• Emergency and pick up contact info
• Camper insurance policy and doctor contact
• Credit card
• Your Membership number and expiration date (if you are currently a Member through August 2025 and do not plan to renew during registration).

Buddy Requests
We pride ourselves in turning strangers into friends. For campers in the same age cohort, we do our best to honor buddy requests. However, due to licensing requirements and other logistics, requests cannot be guaranteed. All parties must initiate a buddy request when registering.

Refund, Cancellation, and Session Change Policy
Due to the high demand for camp and the complexities of registration administration, please select your camp weeks carefully. Refunds are not given for camper dismissal, failure to attend, absence, or sick days. Pro-rated refunds will be offered if camp is not able to open due to extreme weather.

• Prior to May 1, we are able to refund tuition less $150 per camper per week.
• After May 1, we are not able to issue any tuition refunds for cancelled sessions even if spots are refilled.
• Session change requests will be fulfilled if space allows. There is a $50 per camper per week session change fee.
• Note: Memberships are valid upon purchase and are not refundable at any time.

Licensure
deCordova Camps comply with all regulations required by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and is licensed by the local Board of Health. Parents have the right to request and review the following policies: background check, health care, discipline policies and grievance procedures.