Tejon Sculpture Garden
BMoA’s garden has been a part of the museum since it first opened its doors as the Cunningham Gallery in 1956. The first sculpture was installed in 1961 and every new addition is thoughtfully placed allowing for visitors to explore and enjoy the lush garden surrounding the museum. We currently have eight sculptures installed - seven from our permanent collection and one long term loan - created from 1961 to 2016.
One of the most frequented spaces of the museum, BMoA’s garden hosts film screenings, concerts, art classes, and yoga. It is available to rent and used frequently for weddings and charity events.
Birds in Flight, James Lanier
Originally installed at the entrance of the Cunningham Gallery in 1961, Birds in Flight is the earliest sculpture in BMoA’s Permanent Collection. A Bakersfield native, Lanier pulls from the Minimalist aesthetics of 1960s American art, opting for industrial materials to represent the winged animal in its most stripped-down form. The diagonal lineation of the sculpture highlights the modularity of the repeated geometric “v” shape, signaling both the energy and movement the title suggests, as well as the potential for continual reconfiguration of each part to create a unique final form. By enameling the sculpture, the artist removes any indication of the maker’s hand while exaggerating the viewers interpretation of space in and around the form.
He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother, Frank Turner
A Bakersfield native, Frank Turner worked in a multitude of mediums including photography, painting, sculpture and jewelry. In 1974 the self-trained artist booked a two-man show with his brother Lee at the Cunningham Art Gallery. At the time of the exhibition, Turner was studying art at Bakersfield College under his GI bill, but two months before the show’s opening, Lee was killed in a motorcycle accident. He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother was the sculpture they had been working on together and the only piece eventually given a title for the exhibition. Turner donated the work at the end of the exhibition in honor of his brother, finding a permanent home for it in our garden.
Turner’s sculpture operates on a simplified architectural composition, building upon basic visual elements from prominent art movements such as De Stijl (“The Style”), a Dutch movement of the early 20th century which embraced elemental geometric forms and primary colors. The seemingly unrehearsed arrangement of the blocks atop their uneven pedestals balances out the rusted weight and strength of the iron material, exemplifying Turner’s organic approach to a methodical framework.
Split Personality, Joyce Kohl
temporarily removed for conservation October 2021
Joyce Kohl was born in Oakland, CA. After receiving her undergraduate degree in Studio Art at Empire State College in Saratoga, NY, Kohl received her Master’s of Art from California State University, Fullerton in 1977. Her first full-time teaching job was at University of Southern California where she worked for seven years. In 1987 she became Professor of Fine Art at California State University, Bakersfield where she has remained professor to the present day.
Much of Kohl’s work involves a juxtaposition of artifact and modernity. Her interests involve uniting the past and present, the constructs of time, so viewers may consider the kinds of artifacts they will leave behind for future generations. Made of steel and adobe, Split Personality binds organic and man-made material, pointing to Kohl's overarching themes of the primordial and urbanized.
Standing Cheetah AC1, Gwynn Murrill
Gwynn Murrill was born in Ann Arbor, MI, but was raised in Southern California. She received both her BFA and MFA from from University of California, Los Angeles in the early 1970s studying under renowned Minimalist artist John McCracken (1934 – 2011). During this time, Murrill broke away from Minimalism’s object-specific resolve. She sought inspiration centered in nature that would allow her to construct forms based on her memories of them in the real world, as opposed to recreating them straight from a photograph. She states, “To recreate this imagined form, I begin the sculptural process by reducing blocks of wood or foam to a more recognizable shape. The manifestation of the idea takes on a life of its own which I see through until the end, even if it ends up in a slightly different form from the original imagined one.”
In Fall 2017 the BMoA presented a body of Murrill’s work entitled Early Wooden Sculptures 1968 – 1985, presenting the artist’s early exploration of figuration and abstraction through animal and human subjects. The artist’s life-size cheetah invites visitors to consider how industrial materials as artistic media can be manipulated to simultaneously abstract and accentuate the forms of living things.
Volcanic Bronze Portals, Laddie John Dill
Laddie John Dill’s cast bronze diptych Volcanic Bronze Portals references the luminous and colorful façade of the artist’s Volcanic Basin & Range installation in the foyer of Bakersfield Museum of Art. The garden installation evokes the topography of a rugged terrain in a monochromatic relief. By experimenting with man-made materials though organic formations, Dill’s work surpasses the vernacular of traditional painting, drawing, and sculpture, offering an experimental approach to analyzing art outside of the canonical lens. Taking inspiration from American Artist Jaspar Johns with whom he lived in New York for a few months, Dill has never discarded of any of his work, preserving the energy of the past within his present work.
Born in Long Beach, CA, Los Angeles native Laddie John Dill gained notoriety through his craft with materials such as glass, metal, neon, and cement. He graduated from Chouinard Art Institute in 1968. During his time there, he formed the small framing business, Acme Framing Company, with Los Angeles painter Charles Arnoldi. Working alongside notable artists at that time such as Keith Sonnier, Dennis Oppenheim, and Robert Irwin, Dille’s work aligned the artist with the Light and Space movement of the 1960s. This art movement underscored the phenomenon of light and color in closed spaces, rather than the viewer’s experience of looking at a single image or object.
Gilgamesh, Cedric Wentworth
Cedric Wentworth was born in San Francisco, CA. At 15 he apprenticed with granite-carver and bronze-sculptor Richard O'Hanlon and at 16 won Best in Show for figurative bronze casting at the Mill Valley Arts Fair. He continued studies in marble carving at Cacciatori Studies in Italy, specializing in figurative stone carving. Wentworth left Italy in 1988 to live and work in New York City, eventually returning to the Bay Area in 1991. His work is permanently installed as part of the permanent collections the Crocker Museum in Sacramento, CA, and Oakland Museum of California in Oakland, CA.
Wentworth’s Gilgamesh features L-beams which are common in civil engineering, but serves to deconstruct the tradition in representation of the human body in sculpture. Situated within the attitudes of the mid-20th century Bay Area Figurative Movement – widely considered as the first major artistic movement from the West Coast - this sculpture is named after the semi-mythic King of Uruk in Mesopotamia from the narrative poem Epic of Gilgamesh. The king is prophetic, stressing the inevitability of violence and collapse of civilization; Wentworth visualizes the aftermath of this forewarning, concluding the sculpture will stand as the lone documentation of humanity.
Window of Dreams, Betty Younger
Beginning her artistic career with metal jewelry design inspired by the Bauhaus School of Art and Architecture, Betty Younger earned her Bachelor’s in Art from San Jose State University and later received her Master’s in Fine Art and teaching credential from UCLA. Before marrying Bakersfield attorney Milt Younger, Betty taught art at Bakersfield High School to special needs students for many years. The couple opened Younger Gallery at Truxtun Tower in Downtown Bakersfield, hosting a variety of contemporary art exhibitions for the community. She received the Silver Medal for her metal work, The Eternal Flame, at the 2000 Olympic Art Competition. The piece was purchased by the International Olympic Committee for the Olympic Art Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Younger favored polished stainless steel as her primary medium stating, “I enjoy the feel and power over the material – the battle and the ‘give and take’ between the metal and the artist.” Window of Dreams’ height, circles of negative space, and mirrored steel integrates the sky and garden as essential to the viewing experience.
Driven by Art
60th Anniversary Truck
In celebration of its 60th year, Bakersfield Museum presented Driven by Art, a public art project. This project echoed successful community art projects like Chicago’s Cows on Parade, New York’s Big Apples, and Riverside’s Giant Orange. A fleet of 33 small-scale, 1956-era, fiberglass pick-up trucks were embellished by some of Bakersfield's leading artists. Parked centrally on street corners, sidewalks, and roadways, many of these trucks remain installed throughout the Bakersfield downtown area.
Driven by Art was organized by a volunteer committee co-chaired by Keri Gless and Katie Werdel. Keri Gless spoke to the inspiration behind the project by saying, “The planning for Driven By Art has been a dream of mine to bring to the Bakersfield community and Kern County since I moved here10 years ago. I moved from my hometown of Riverside where the at that time, the Riverside Art Museum was executing the ‘Giant Orange Art-venture.’ As the wife of a citrus farmer and supporter of the arts, this project has always held a special place in my heart and one I hoped to see duplicated in my adoptive hometown.”