Texas Tech: Public Art Walk

Since 1998 the Texas Tech University System has set aside one percent of the estimated cost of major building projects for public art, and the main Lubbock campus now holds dozens of commissioned works. This loop of about 1.5 to 2 miles links ten of them, from a bronze tornado of books to granite giants by Jesús Moroles. It passes through the library and humanities quad, swings north past the science buildings, and finishes with a 1950s fresco and a bronze bench scene you can sit in. All stops are outdoors except the Holden Hall mural, which is visible during building hours.

Texas Tech's Lubbock campus doubles as a sizable outdoor art collection. Since 1998 the Texas Tech University System has set aside one percent of the estimated cost of major building projects for public art, and this loop of about a mile and a half to two miles links ten works from across the campus.

Variety is the draw. Tom Otterness's Tornado of Ideas sends a bronze swirl of books spinning up out of a splitting house, topped by a cartoon Masked Rider, with a coin-munching prairie dog tucked into the wreckage. Charles Umlauf's Prometheus, a bronze of about 16 feet from 1967-68, is older than the public art program itself, and Lubbock-raised Terry Allen's Liquid Assets, a suited executive leaking water from every seam, lands somewhere between funny and melancholy.

Indoors, Peter Hurd's Pioneer Mural runs roughly 108 feet around the Holden Hall rotunda, portraying 16 early Lubbock residents; Hurd began it in 1953, and it was his largest mural project. Elsewhere you can take a seat among Glenna Goodacre's Park Place figures, which were made to be touched.

Allow about 70 minutes. Nearly everything is outdoors and free to see, so the only planning is catching Holden Hall while it's open.