The display of art in public spaces is an ideal arrangement, allowing for artistic discoveries in unexpected contexts, often to marvelous effect. The Public Art Fund and Creative Time in New York and London's Artangel have built rich histories supporting temporary, outdoor art projects. Art fairs are now following suit, with Art Basel's Public Art Projects and Frieze's Sculpture Park among the best, while Germany's skulptur projekte münster has presented a citywide exhibition of public sculptures every ten years since 1977. But the mother of all outdoor sculpture exhibitions is Sonsbeek, which began in Sonsbeek Park in Arnhem, the Netherlands, in 1949.

After previous iterations that displayed work in the park as well as in other parts of Arnhem, Sonsbeek 2008: Grandeur has returned to the exhibition's origins, once again making Sonsbeek Park the sole site for 26 commissioned outdoor projects by 28 international artists. Unique to this year's exhibition was a procession of the show's artworks carried through Arnhem's old inner city by citizens organized into various guilds. More than 1,000 people took part in the procession, and another 30,000 lined the streets to view the celebration. It was a key ingredient of curator Anna Tilroe's vision for the Sonsbeek's tenth show — a vision that sees "grandeur" as "the painful yet courageous struggle to transcend your own everyday limits," and used the communal walk as a means to "celebrate art as a symbol of human imagination."

Once the sculptures were installed in the woods, thickets, and ponds of Sonsbeek Park, a sublime interaction with nature commenced. Happening upon French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel's massive, glittering crown — made from hand-blown Murano glass spheres and suspended above a forest clearing — is awe-inspiring, but to ponder the piece alongside Mexican-born artist Brody Condon's wandering, medievally outfitted troupe of LARP (live-action role-playing) gamers is doubly magnificent. Likewise, finding three of Ghanaian-born El Anatsui's colossal sheets, which are based on ceremonial cloths and made from metal bottle caps and drink cans, draped over a cluster of flowering rhododendrons is a unique and extraordinary experience.

Dutch artist Rini Hurkmans created a Flag of Compassion that flies above a meadow and is being sold as a multiple to benefit charity. Madrid-based Fernando Sánchez Castillo made a fountain of Spitting Leaders, in which life-size bronzes of ruthless rulers vulgarly drench one another in a lake. Swiss team Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger constructed Mystery of Fertility, a dense installation of tree branches and gardening tools bursting through the eggshell-blue walls of a garden shed; at the heart of the assemblage, magenta salt crystals aim to encompass all of the violent action.

American sculptor Rona Pondick cast Head in Tree in stainless steel and placed it at the surface of a reflective pond. The head, made in Pondick's likeness, hangs like a piece of fruit in the barren tree, with the exposed roots suggesting a coiled umbilical cord. And high on a hill, Brussels-based Michel François alters the norms of ecology with Appearance of a Tree, offering an uprooted, yet still-living 25-year-old lime tree resting horizontally on a pedestal. The tree requires intensive care during the exhibition, but if it survives, it will be replanted to help keep Sonsbeek Park an enchanting setting for future artistic interactions.

-Paul Laster