October 13, 2017

Press Release

Bio: Artist Larry Kirkland

Bio: Artist Larry Kirkland

Artist Larry Kirkland, known for his large-scale public art, was commissioned to create the entrance gates that greet each guest of Museum of the Bible. He also designed the 16-panel, freestanding art glass window that welcomes guests in the museum’s vestibule, as well as the glass railings of the grand staircase in the museum’s atrium.

Born in 1950 in Port Hueneme, California, Kirkland moved with his military family throughout the U.S. and abroad during his childhood. He received his undergraduate degree in environmental design in 1972 from Oregon State University and his Masters of Fine Arts degree in 1974 from the
University of Kansas.                                                                                                    

Since then, he has collaborated with community and business leaders and design professionals to conceive and create his large-scale, multidimensional public artworks. Kirkland’s installations can be found in institutional and municipal buildings, transit hubs, research facilities, libraries, universities, cruise ships and urban parks and plazas. Among his many commissions are artworks installed at Pennsylvania Station in New York; the American Red Cross headquarters and National Academies of Science in Washington; Putra World Trade Center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Kansai International Airport in Osaka, Japan.

Kirkland has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and has served on the peer review panel for the U.S. General Services Administration’s Design Excellence and the Arts Program. He has served as a juror on numerous art and architecture competitions and programs, and has been involved in arts master plans for New Jersey Transit and Denver’s Wellington E. Webb municipal office building. He serves on the public art network council of Americans for the Arts.