A walk across Baylor’s 1,000-acre campus surely illuminates the care and artistic details put in at every step. It’s easy to notice the striking red brick and white cornices that make up the buildings’ Georgian-style architecture, Pat Neff Hall’s gleaming 23.5-karat gold cupola, and the many eye-catching statues and monuments that serve as iconic waypoints across the campus.
But tucked within Baylor’s campus are hidden gems — stories, pieces of the University’s heritage and values, and little-known details not obvious to the naked eye.
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George W. Truett Theological Seminary is an obvious hotbed for religious art and houses many different kinds of crosses. At the south corner of the building in the seminary’s prayer garden lives one of the campus’ newest crosses, The Empty Cross, added in February 2022 as part of the Baugh-Reynolds Campus’ 20th anniversary celebration.
The Empty Cross is a 7-foot, 7-inch structure made with Cor-teen steel by the Kerrville-based Christian artist Max Greiner Jr. The sculpture — one of Greiner’s easily recognizable, copyrighted signature pieces — is meant to emphasize that Jesus Christ is alive rather than dead, the hollow design signifying that Jesus passed from crucifixion to resurrection.
Greiner’s empty cross can scale as large as 77 feet tall, such as the one planted in The Coming King Sculpture Prayer Garden in Greiner’s hometown. Another of Greiner’s signature pieces, the Divine Servant, resides in Waco in front of the Texas Baptist Historical Collection.
Just outside Truett Seminary, there is a statue depicting Jesus on his knees, palms held skyward as he looks up to heaven agonizingly on the eve of his crucifixion. Called The Kneeling Christ, the statue was created by the great Texan mid-century sculptor Charles Umlauf.
The lifesize bronze statue once sat inside the Quadrangle before being moved to its current location at the seminary, where it has remained for decades.
Though Umlauf taught at the University of Texas at Austin — his sculptures are still found in the capitol at the UMLAUF Sculpture Garden and Museum — his son, Karl Umlauf, would join the Baylor faculty in 1989 as an Artist-in-Residence and receive the University’s Centennial Professor Award in 2003.
Nods to the University’s Christian heritage scripture are found engraved on everything from sidewalks to paver bricks like those outside McLane Stadium or the Hurd Welcome Center. Meanwhile, Tidwell Bible Building features 68 limestone panels, each weighing a ton, that tell the story of the Old and New Testaments on a panorama that circles the building twice.
In front of Tidwell Bible Building stand two statues that represent deep history, some of the most recent additions near Founders Mall where stories of Baylor’s issues of race are told in the details.
The 7-foot-tall bronze statues of Baylor’s first Black graduates, the late Rev. Robert L. Gilbert (’67), and Barbara A. Walker (’67) were created by renowned sculptor Benjamin Victor, the only living artist with three works in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statutory Hall. Breaking the barrier of segregation at Baylor, the two trailblazers not only endured racism but also paved the way for a more diverse university and went on to have illustrious careers.
A pioneering civil rights leader, Gilbert was both a pastor and educator in Waco and the first Black person elected to the Waco Independent School District Board. Walker, who attended the unveiling of the statues on April 4, 2023, earned a master’s degree in social work from Florida State University, served mental health needs in California for 30 years, and had her own practice working with families whose children had been removed from their homes.
Read more: In Spite of Everything: Robert Gilbert
The statue of Judge R.E.B. Baylor across from those of Walker and Gilbert was also updated to add context about the University founder’s history of enslavement and unveiled in February 2024.
The final piece of recent improvements made to more fully tell parts of Baylor’s history is the Memorial to Enslaved Persons located on Founders Mall. Officially dedicated in November 2025, the limestone monument honors the enslaved people who were forced to construct Baylor’s original campus in Independence.
While the monument has significantly and obviously changed the face of Founders Mall — even the statue of Rufus Burleson, another founder and slaveholder, was moved away from the mall and to a more discreet location — but the context is in the details. The 33 illuminated spaces in the memorial’s 99-foot-long outer ring each represent one of the 33 individuals enslaved by Judge R.E.B. Baylor, varying in size representing the ages of the individuals. The monument is even built atop dirt from Baylor’s original campus site.
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While some sculptures have a concrete purpose and meaning, others aren’t so obvious. The eye-catching, bright yellow, 1,700-pound abstract piece called Santa Monica III by sculptor Betty Gold was installed in 2002 outside the Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Center.
The piece was a gift to the University from Pittsburgh philanthropists David and Micki Chatkin, who had been commissioning sculptures from Gold for years to donate to American colleges and universities.
So, why Baylor? According to Gold, a Baylor alumnus she met at her studio in Venice, California, convinced her that Baylor needed one of her statues, but the story is a bit more nuanced. Not only did Gold live in Waco as a child, but her father and a number of aunts and uncles are Baylor grads.
Santa Monica III is one of many outdoor sculptures on the grounds of the art building. The Martin Museum of Art curates an Outdoor Sculpture Tour complete with audio to learn about the art around the building, starting at July Tripod and ending with Earth Circle.
On Bailey Plaza near Carroll Science Building stands another abstract piece called Flora Bella. The 11-foot, 1,700-pound sculpture by artist David L. Deming was installed in honor of longtime biology professor Dr. Cornelia Marschall Smith on October 5, 1996, Smith’s 101st birthday.
The name refers to Smith’s doctoral dissertation, “Development of Dionaea muscipula: Flower and Seed,” which was published in the Botanical Gazette in 1929. A 1918 graduate of Baylor University was a professor of biology at Baylor from 1940-1967, and was named to the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame in 1989.
The sculpture tucked away in the McLean Foyer of Meditation on the main floor of the Armstrong Browning Library is truly a hidden gem. The bronze cast called the Clasped Hands of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning rests in a dedicated alcove called the Cloister of Clasped Hands, featuring walnut paneling engraved with Elizabeth Browning’s famous Sonnet 43 and Robert’s The Ring and the Book.
Read more: A Marriage of True Minds
The piece by American artist Harriet Goodhue Hosmer symbolizes the immortal romace of the prominent English poets of the Victorian era. The artist created the piece at the behest of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1853, and her signature is found on the end of Robert Browning’s wrist. Since Baylor acquired the iconic piece on June 14, 1920, it has been a highlight of the library’s collection.
