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Chicago has “Cloud Gate,” also known as “The Bean,” “Chicago Picasso,” and “The Crown Fountain.” Minneapolis has “Spoonbridge and Cherry.” And in Grand Rapids, “La Grande Vitesse,” though initially disliked, has become an icon for the city and is even painted on the sides of its garbage trucks.

Don’t expect to see a likeness of the 26-foot-tall “Nomade” on the sides of Des Moines garbage trucks anytime soon, but hopes are high that it and the sculpture park it will be a part of, will develop into a similar icon for the city of Des Moines.

“Nomade” will make its official debut along with 23 other sculptures when the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park opens in Des Moines on Sept. 27.

“What I want to emphasize more than anything is this is an extraordinary array of artists; it’s an extraordinary array of their works,” said Jeff Fleming, director of the Des Moines Art Center. “I think there is potential for this and the potential for art to literally transform the community.”

“This will be the heartbeat of the city.”

The 4.4-acre sculpture collection in Des Moines’ Western Gateway Park came to fruition thanks to collaboration between Mary and John Pappajohn, who donated all 24 pieces, the Des Moines Art Center and the city of Des Moines.

The 24-sculpture donation, which is believed to be the largest single public gift in Des Moines’ history and the largest public gift of art in Iowa history, was appraised by an outside auction house at an estimated $40 million.

Glenn Harper, editor at Sculpture magazine, went down the list and praised most of the sculptures, and based on looking at the list of artists and sculptures, said the park showed a lot of promise.

“They are all blue chippers. They are all artists who are major figures in the art world but also have proved an appeal to the general public,” said Harper about the collection.

“Although some of them do work that you would think would puzzle the general public, they have all managed to bridge that gap, and that is one of the reasons they are some of the most important artists of the past three or four generations,” he said.

Whether the park reaches iconic status and is talked about in the same breath as the Walker Art Center’s Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, which encompasses 11 acres and contains more than 40 pieces, will be determined by more than the artwork. Its location away from the art museum and the design of the park, according to Harper, go a long way toward how the park is received.

He said it is a good sign that the Des Moines park is free, doesn’t have a fence and isn’t in immediate proximity to the art museum, but ultimately time will tell if it will elevate in status. But cities like Des Moines are hoping.

“(Whether the park becomes an icon) is kind of an organic thing and it is hard to plan for, but I think now that it has happened with sculpture gardens and public art, there is some hope in cities that what they are doing will be embraced in that way,” said Harper, who recently published a book about the big developing field of sculpture parks.

Peter Eleey, visual arts curator at the Walker Art Center, pointed to the installation of “Chicago Picasso” in 1967 as a point when cities began embracing public works of art as icons for the city, and he described how works of art grab iconic status.

“What resonates are those things – mountains, buildings, art – that can be easily abstracted, pictured and recalled when we are far from home,” he said. “Art often achieves this more easily and better than anything else.”

Harper said cities have seen the success of Millennium Park in Chicago, for example, and want a taste.

Fleming envisions “Nomade,” by Jaume Plensa, becoming an icon for Des Moines, and hopes that the sculpture part will become a “rallying center” for the city and a destination for its residents, just as Millennium Park has in Chicago.

It’s hard to actually rank sculpture parks because each have different characters that are unique and based on whether the parks are urban, like in Chicago, or rural, like in Minneapolis.

“(The Des Moines sculpture park) has a different character because it is in the center of the city, it is in the urban core, and Minneapolis is in a sense in the urban core, but it’s not. It is more enclosed, and it is not the first thing you see when you come into the city,” said Fleming, who was quick to say one isn’t better than the other. “This of course is the first thing you see when you come into the (city of Des Moines).”

Harper said Des Moines’ park compared more closely with the successful, free and fenceless Seattle Olympic Sculpture Park, which features 21 sculptures and opened on nine acres downtown in 2007. An article in the April 2009 edition of ARTnews said the park spurred development in what used to be a “seedy neighborhood,” and was “instantly popular with runners, dog walkers, environmentalists, tourists and families.”

Fleming believes the park will have many benefits, including development of the area, business retention, employee retention, and bringing Iowans and out-of-state tourists into the city. How many visitors the park actually attracts is tough to estimate and will be even tougher to measure since there is no cost to enter and no fence; Minneapolis’ sculpture park attracts 382,328 visitors annually. Fleming, however, feels that ultimately the cultural impact will be the biggest gift of the sculpture garden.

“It is the intangibles such as changing the aura of a community, changing the atmosphere of the community, that is so significant, and that is a very significant thing and this sculpture park is helping to do that,” he said.

“I think the possibilities are endless for what this can do for the city.”

Harper reiterated that the Des Moines collection was full of works by blue-chip artists, but most were older, and said one factor that has been an important aspect at other parks was having younger, emerging artists in the park as well.

“I think the parks that do that are more alive over time and they don’t become just kind of background, which sometimes public art can be,” he said. “I think parks that have encouraged rotating work or younger work or more adventurous work have been the ones that have kept the balance over time.”

Fleming said there are plans for more sculptures to be added, but couldn’t divulge specifics.

For now. “Nomade,” which by the way was designed by the same artist who created “The Crown Fountain” in Chicago, will lead the way,

Perhaps “Nomade” will be coming soon on a garbage truck near you.