Emil Breisach, former managing director of the ORF Styrian provincial studios, sustained the notion that contemporary sculptures and viewers need to be granted a lieu of inter-action in public space and not only in museums. In 1981 he began to show works on the grounds of the studio which were the starting point for the idea of creating an adequate placement for Austrian sculpture in correspondence with international art.

The ideal site for a generously laid-out sculpture park was found in the 7 hectare covering park designed by Dieter Kienast, the well-known landscape architect from Switzerland in 2000 for the international garden show held in Unterpremstätten 7 km South of Graz.

To protect the park which to date contains 80 permanent sculptures and to put it in a well founded scientific context as well as place it in a wide spread art-culture environment and at the same time make it accessible to an even broader public, Kurt Flecker, Styria's cultural consultant, in accordance with the Private Foundation facilitated the sculpture park's takeover by the Landesmuseum Joanneum, known as Universalmuseum Joanneum today, under the manangement of Elisabeth Fiedler.