Sculpture Garden Near Me in Westwood: UCLA's Free Murphy Garden of Bronzes

The Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden costs nothing to enter, sits on UCLA's north campus just south of the Broad Art Center, and holds more than 70 modern and contemporary works across five landscaped acres. If you are in Westwood typing sculpture garden near me, this is the big one: Rodin, Matisse, Miró, Henry Moore and Richard Serra, all outdoors and spaced across a sloping lawn. Parking Structure 3, entered from Hilgard Avenue, drops you a short walk from the brick plaza.

Franklin D. Murphy, UCLA's third chancellor, started imagining a public sculpture garden in 1960, and the site he chose was a parking lot wedged between campus buildings. He worked with the university's supervising architect, Ralph D. Cornell, and the garden was dedicated in 1967 under Murphy's name. The goal, in the Hammer Museum's words, was a park-like setting that "fosters the learning process" for the students walking through it every day.

Today the Hammer Museum looks after the collection and calls it one of the most distinguished outdoor sculpture installations in the country. That is not an exaggeration: few campuses anywhere let you see a Rodin and a Serra within a two-minute walk, for free, between classes. The flip side is that it is a working campus, so the crowd is mostly students cutting across to Macgowan or Bunche Hall.

The design has three distinct parts. The first is a formal plaza paved in brick, sunny and open, where the heaviest metal sits. The second is a walkway shaded by a triple row of South African coral trees. The third is an informal sloping lawn cut by curving paths, with jacarandas, sycamores, canary pines, eucalyptus and redwoods throwing shade over the bronzes.

A small bridge crosses part of the grounds, and the seating is deliberately informal, with low walls and lawns rather than benches in rows. The Hammer's own map uses Macgowan Hall and Richard Serra's steel cylinder as the landmarks to aim for, which helps, because the garden has no gate, ticket booth or single street door.

Start on the brick plaza with Henri Matisse's four Backs reliefs, Bas Relief I to IV, made between 1909 and 1930. They hang in sequence, so you can watch the figure dissolve from a modeled body into a few massive vertical forms. Right next to them stands Richard Serra's T.E.U.C.L.A. from 2006, a tilted cylinder of weathering steel that the Hammer uses as a landmark in its own walking directions.

Walk on toward the lawn and look for Auguste Rodin's The Walking Man, a headless, armless bronze striding figure enlarged in 1905. Then hunt down Joan Miró's Mère Ubu from 1975, Henry Moore's Two-Piece Reclining Figure No. 3 from 1961, Jean Arp's Hybrid Fruit Called Pagoda from 1934, and David Smith's polished stainless-steel Cubi XX from 1964, which flashes in afternoon sun.

On the second pass, look for the quieter pieces. Gerhard Marcks' bronze Maja from 1941 stands over seven feet tall. Alexander Calder's Button Flower dates to 1959, Isamu Noguchi's Garden Elements to 1962, and Barbara Hepworth's Elegy III, a hollow form with color inside, to 1966. Deborah Butterfield's Pensive, from around 1997, is one of the few later works on the lawn.

An honest note: the collection leans heavily on mid-century men. A 2020 Los Angeles Times walk-through counted only four women among the artists, Butterfield, Hepworth, Claire Falkenstein and Mahler. If you want a more contemporary mix, the Hammer's galleries on Wilshire are the better half of the day, and they are free too.

You can wander alone, but the Hammer runs free, conversation-based tours of the garden led by paid UCLA student educators. Public tours need no reservation, while groups of 10 or more should register as a self-guided group. All guided tours meet at Macgowan Hall, on the edge of the garden.

A tour is worth it for the Matisse alone, since the student guides tend to walk you along all four reliefs and talk through how they changed over 21 years. Teachers bringing classes by coach can use the bus turnaround by the Intramural Field on Charles E. Young Drive North, off Sunset Boulevard.

Weekday mornings bring the most foot traffic, as students stream between classes, but nobody lingers, so the lawn stays calm. Late afternoon is the best light for photos, when the sun drops behind the trees and the bronzes turn warm. Weekends are the quietest time overall, and campus parking is cheaper then. The plaza has little shade and could use a bench near the reliefs, so on a hot afternoon start under the coral trees instead.

If a graduation, film shoot or event is setting up on the lawn, skip the garden for that hour and walk to the Robert Graham sculptures in Rolfe Courtyard, on the north side of Royce Hall, then come back.

The Hammer recommends Parking Structure 3: drive south on Hilgard Avenue and take the first right into campus. A permit is always required, bought at the pay station or by phone, and refunds are not offered. On weekdays before 4 pm an all-day permit costs $18, after 4 pm the all-night rate is $12, and on weekends $12 covers the whole day.

Since August 9, 2026, Big Blue Bus Route 17 uses the new Macgowan Hall Terminal, which is right at the garden. Routes 1, 2 and 18 stop at Charles E. Young Drive and Parking Structure 2, and Routes 8 and Rapid 12 connect Gateway Plaza with the Metro E Line at Westwood/Rancho Park.

The Hammer Museum, at 10899 Wilshire Boulevard on the corner of Westwood Boulevard, is about 1.5 miles south, or a 30-minute walk. Admission is free and needs no reservation. It opens Tuesday to Sunday from 11 am to 6 pm and closes on Mondays, July 4, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Its garage charges $9 for three hours with validation, or a $9 flat rate after 5 pm on weekdays and all weekend.

Location: Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, UCLA north campus, Los Angeles, CA 90095, just south of the Broad Art Center and next to Macgowan Hall. Admission is free. Managed by the Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90024. Park in Structure 3 from Hilgard Avenue, $12 all day on weekends.