The Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden

Most visitors to Stanford never find it. Off Santa Teresa Street, a gravel path leads into a grove of oaks and tall trees and between the trunks stand carved poles painted red, black and white, a wooden eagle on the shoulders of an ancestress and a crocodile figure lying in the dirt. This is the Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden, made on this spot in 1994 by artists who had traveled from the Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea.

It is free, outdoors and quiet. This guide explains how the garden came about, who carved it, what to look for and how to join the free monthly tour. For the rest of the campus collection, see our guide to public art at Stanford.

How the garden began

The idea came from Jim Mason, a Stanford anthropology student. While doing field work in Papua New Guinea around 1989, he met carvers who proposed a cultural exchange. Mason told the Palo Alto Weekly in 1996 that his first impulse was personal: he had spent time in their world and wanted to bring his friends to see his.

He spent the next years raising money from private donors and secured a permanent site on campus. Large tree trunks chosen by the artists were shipped from Papua New Guinea, some close to 40 feet long, according to Stanford Magazine. The carvers flew to California in 1994 and worked through the summer. The Palo Alto Weekly dated their residency from May through September of that year.

The community took them in. Local restaurants and families provided meals, the carvers visited schools and painted faces and Friday night barbecues in the grove drew crowds. For most of the artists it was their first trip abroad.

After they left, the finished pieces were installed with explanatory signs and underground lighting. The garden officially opened with a week of free public events from May 28 to June 2, 1996. The artists returned for the celebration, which ended with an all-night drum and dance ceremony in the grove. The Palo Alto Weekly called it the first non-Western outdoor art installation at Stanford.

The carvers

The artists came from Iatmul and Kwoma communities along the Sepik River, one of the great carving traditions of the Pacific. Stanford Magazine describes ten artists plus an interpreter, aged 27 to 74, from six societies in the region. They worked in teams of two or three, pairing older men who held the myths and clan knowledge with younger men who had the strength for the heavy work.

They used handmade iron adzes, hardened chisels and knives, with the occasional chain saw. Some designs belong to particular clans. Mason explained in 1996 that a carver may only carve the designs his clan owns, so the poles also record who made them. Unlike most museum displays of Pacific art, each work in the garden is labeled with the name of its artist.

One of the Iatmul artists, Teddy Balangu of Palimbei village, later worked as an artist in residence at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia.

What you will see

The center of the garden follows the floor plan of a Sepik spirit house, the large ceremonial building where men gather, hold initiations and talk. The poles stand where a spirit house's posts would hold up a thatched roof. Here is how the garden breaks down:

• The entrance eagle: Near the path, a large wooden eagle perches on the shoulders of an ancestress, like the finials on top of Iatmul spirit houses.
• Iatmul poles: A cluster of very tall poles carved deep with faces, animals and spirals in the Iatmul style.
• Kwoma poles: A row of poles painted in the reds and blacks of Kwoma tradition.
• Stone figures: Large pumice sculptures. Stone is rare on the Sepik floodplain, so this was a new material for the carvers. The Palo Alto Weekly counted ten works in pumice brought from near Mono Lake.
• Crocodiles and drums: Carved crocodile forms, central to Sepik origin stories and garamut slit drums.

In all, the 1996 count was about 40 carvings. Look for Kura, a protective goddess who appears on several poles. In one story told on the carvings, she is forced to marry a crocodile and is flown home by one of her children, who is part eagle and part crocodile.

The answer to Rodin

Its best story involves a famous neighbor. When Teddy Balangu first saw photographs of the Rodin Sculpture Garden, he reportedly said, "This is nothing. We can do better than that." The carvers made two works with the same names as Rodin bronzes on campus. Their Thinker shows an ancestor sitting beside the hole from which he emerged into the world, puzzling over how to make people from clay, with the pieces of his failed first try scattered at his feet. Their Gates of Hell tells of a flood that destroyed the ancestral world. Seeing both gardens on the same day makes the comparison vivid.

Where it is

The garden sits in a wooded grove at the corner of Santa Teresa Street and Lomita Drive, on the west side of central campus. Roble Hall, a large student residence, is across the way. The Windhover Contemplative Center stands right next door at 370 Santa Teresa Street. The Main Quad is about a ten minute walk to the east and Lake Lagunita is a few minutes south.

Check the zone sign wherever you park and pay through ParkMobile. Our Stanford parking and transit guide covers the rules and which zones are free on weekends.

The free monthly tour

Docents from the Cantor Arts Center lead a free public tour of the garden. According to the Stanford events listing:

• When: The fourth Sunday of each month at 11:30 a.m., rain or shine.
• Where: Meet at the corner of Santa Teresa Street and Lomita Drive.
• Cost: Free with no reservation.

The next dates in the pattern are Sunday, November 22 and Sunday, December 27, 2026, but tours can be cancelled around holidays and university closures. Confirm on the Stanford events calendar before you go. The garden closed for renovation in late 2023 and tours resumed in January 2024.

Visiting on your own

1. Come in daylight. The grove is shady and the paths are gravel and dirt. The 1996 installation added ground-level lighting, but details are far easier to read by day.
2. Read the signs. Labels name the artist and often summarize the story a work tells.
3. Walk the whole loop. The stone figures sit a little apart from the poles and are easy to miss.
4. Leave the works alone. Do not climb on or lean against the carvings. The wood has weathered outdoors for more than 30 years.
5. Allow 20 to 30 minutes. More if you combine it with Windhover's outdoor labyrinth next door.

Why it is worth the detour

The garden is not a reconstruction of a Sepik village and it was never meant to be. Mason described it as a chance for the carvers to reinterpret their own traditions in a Western public art setting. The result mixes the old and the new: ancestresses in grass skirts, figures that wind around the natural curve of a trunk and one bare pole that hints at a sculpture never finished. It turned the usual anthropology trip around. Instead of a Stanford researcher going to study a village, the villagers came to Stanford and left their own record behind. Thirty years later it still feels like a conversation between two worlds.

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