Updraft (Michael Burns, 25 ft) Brittingham Park

Madison, Wisconsin, United States

Public art

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

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Updraft is a public artwork by Michael Burns in Brittingham Park, Madison, Wisconsin: two steel arches, each 20 feet high, flank the park’s bike path. Installed in 2016 with benches and garden fencing, it passed to City of Madison ownership by resolution in July 2019.

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Updraft (Michael Burns, 25 ft) Brittingham Park

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Site-level location · 43.0649° N, 89.3962° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

Riders on the bike path through Brittingham Park, beside Monona Bay in Madison, pass between two 20-foot steel arches threaded with curving leaves.

Updraft is the work of Michael (Mike) Burns, a Madison metalworker whose public art also includes arches in the UW Arboretum. Burns has said the idea came from lying in the back of his grandfather’s pickup truck as a child, looking up at the elm trees: “It was like going through a cathedral.” Isthmus reported in 2016 that Burns calls it “an expression of motion,” evoking leaves caught up in the wind.

It was a neighbourhood project. The Monona Bay Neighborhood Association led it, and in April 2016 Isthmus reported that about 80 per cent of an $80,000 budget had been raised from private and public money, beginning with a $5,000 seed grant from the city’s Planning Department. The city had also approved $6,329 of Art in Public Places funding in 2014. Hooper Corp., on Madison’s north side, donated its welders and fabricators, with Burns supervising, and the concrete footings were poured the previous December. The installation also includes benches and an ornamented fence around the Brittingham Community Garden, which dates the addition to 2016.

On 16 July 2019 the Common Council passed a resolution accepting ownership of the artwork, the fence adornments and the bench. The resolution records that the neighbourhood association had set up a $5,200 endowment with the Madison Parks Foundation toward the city’s upkeep costs.

The two halves stand on either side of the path, set a few feet apart across it and offset along it, so that riders approaching head-on see a single arch (Madison Magazine, 2025; Isthmus, 2016). The city places the work near Main Street and Brittingham Place, and the community garden beside it says on its website that it is open whenever the park is open.

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PRACTICAL

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WHAT TO EXPECT

Two steel arches stand on either side of the bike path in Brittingham Park, with benches and ornamented fencing around the adjoining community garden, which has views of Monona Bay. The garden says it is open whenever the park is open and welcomes visitors.

ACCESS

Brittingham Park, Madison, near Main Street and Brittingham Place according to the city. The arches flank the park’s bike path in a public park. The adjoining community garden has members’ plots; visitors are asked to be considerate.

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