Explore Long Beach's Public Art

Anyone who’s driven up to this Art Deco gem knows that the terminal itself, both inside and out, functions as a stunning work of public art. In fact, a few years back, the BBC decided to rank the most beautiful airports in the world, and Long Beach Airport, which it called “unique” and “boutique,” was the only American property on the list.

When it comes to specific works of art, the airport features all manner of paintings, murals, mosaics, mobiles and statues. It recently showcased a diverse art exhibit in collaboration with Able ARTS Work. The 14 pieces of art, displayed in the baggage claim area, were created by artists with developmental disabilities and autism.

Constructed in 1941, Long Beach Airport’s oldest visual art arguably remains its most stunning: a series of mosaics made with ceramic floor tiles showing, among other things, a global air traffic map, seagulls in flight, shipping, oil production as well as a stunning zodiac compass. Incredibly, the mosaics, created by Works Progress Administration artist Grace Clements, were hidden underneath carpeting for many years, before being restored to their continuing glory.

Across the street from the airport is perhaps the most noticeable piece of public art in the city at night. The Fly DC Jets sign that used to welcome people to the massive McDonnell Douglas plant that, at its height, employed about 50,000 people, features an elegantly curving, circular flight pattern accompanied by a jet to its right. All of it is traced by neon tubes that, when lit at night, give off a red, white and blue glow that is stunning – and when there’s a little bit of moisture or fog in the air, totally entrancing.

No area of the city features so much public art as Downtown Long Beach. Art spills out on virtually every block; in front of public buildings, on the walls of commercial properties, across crosswalks – heck, even on utility boxes.

Perhaps the most viewed of these is muralist John Valadez’s Welcome to Long Beach, a 60-foot-high work painted on a west-facing wall of the IMT Gallery 421 apartment building on Broadway. Featuring a 19-foot high depiction of a contestant in the 1957 Miss Universe pageant held in the city, along with numerous beach scenes, the mural is the first thing many people see when coming into the downtown area off the 710 Freeway.

Murals are so plentiful, it’s difficult to go more than a block or two before seeing another one, much of them created during the annual Long Beach Walls event that has helped to turn Long Beach into a spectacular outdoor gallery.

But there are other forms. Another spectacular Millard Sheets mosaic was unveiled at the International City Bank building (249 E. Ocean Blvd.) a few years back.

Sea Grass is a graceful, 30-foot high sculpture placed on the median on Ocean Boulevard between Chestnut and Magnolia avenues. Created by Barbara Grygutis, the work, despite being made of aluminum and sheet metal, sublimely recreates the movement of several blades of sea grass in the ocean. It’s even more magnificent at night when lit from within.

As you’d expect from a university with a nationally recognized school of art, California State University, Long Beach has an exceptional collection of public art, especially when including the recently expanded, free to the public, Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum and its more than 2,000 pieces.

Art is present at virtually every step on campus: mosaics – such as the recent addition of the stunning, historically significant Millard Sheets work located at the Kleefeld’s Horn Center entrance – murals and a collection of 18 sculptures which began in 1965 with the California International Sculpture Symposium.

Claire Falkenstein’s “U” as a Set, is one of the most noteworthy of these sculptures. The tangled amalgam of copper tubing and pipe expands and contracts as it sits in water on the upper campus, bordered by Seventh Street. If Claire Falkenstein’s name sounds familiar, she is not only one of the 20th century’s most experimental sculptors, but the namesake of Claire’s At The Museum restaurant, located at the Long Beach Museum of Art, and situated around another stunning Falkenstien water sculpture: Structure and Flow.

It would be difficult for any work of art to compete with the vast beauty of the Pacific Ocean, but two pieces of public art sitting very close to the shore are among the most viewed and appreciated in Long Beach.

In Bluff Park, on Ocean Boulevard at Paloma Avenue, is The Lone Sailor, which honors all the men and women who served in the Navy, as well as all other seafaring service organizations as well as all branches of the military. Sculptor Stanley Bleifeld has created several of these statues for other cities – San Francisco, Washington D.C., etc. – using materials from several US Navy ships when casting his bronze creation. The Long Beach Sailor has the distinction of being the only one of Bleifeld’s creations who is actually looking out to the ocean, which he does with an expression both plaintive and proud.

Down below Bluff Park, on Alamitos Beach, there is the eye-popping, rainbow lifeguard tower. Among the most photographed pieces of art in the city, the tower was unveiled in 2020 as a symbol of the city’s pride in its LGBTQ+ community. Then, in March 2021, the tower burned down, a victim of suspected arson. Just months later, a new, similarly painted tower was proudly unveiled and enthusiastically received.

Over the last half dozen years, Uptown has grown steadily in popularity with the addition of community gathering points, retail and public spaces as well as many new dining options. Emblematic of that energy was the appearance of three, large-scale murals in 2016.

Dream, by Marcel “SEL” Blanco, is 95-feet long and 13-feet high, and features children at every phase of climbing an enchanted tree until, finally, one leaps to sprout wings and fly. The truly dreamlike atmosphere and color scheme is located at 1639 E. Artestia Blvd.

Run, Skip, Jump Long Beach, located at the northwest corner of Downey Avenue and 64th Street, is even larger – 99-feet long, 14-feet high. Artist Dog Knit Sweater has created a precisely rendered, everyday, colorful scene of cyclists, bus riders, planter waterers and balloon carriers,

Tracy Negrete’s Together We Soar, located at 6900 Long Beach Blvd., features the faces of eight children – some happy, some curious, one somewhat wary – under idyllic, rainbow tinted skies.