Corpus Christi Approves Bronze Farrah Fawcett Statue Near Selena Memorial

A bronze statue of hometown Hollywood star Farrah Fawcett is coming to the Corpus Christi seawall, and it will stand roughly 1,500 feet from the city's beloved Selena memorial. The Corpus Christi City Council approved an agreement with the donor group Friends of Farrah Fawcett on August 25, clearing the way for a 7-foot-tall bronze sculpture that will depict Fawcett's Charlie's Angels character Jill Munroe fleeing a jewelry-smuggling henchman on a skateboard.

According to MySA, the statue will measure 7 feet tall and 5.5 feet wide, weigh between 600 and 700 pounds, and sit atop an 11-inch base, bringing its total height to 8 feet. The piece is expected to be installed along Shoreline Boulevard near Mirador #6 on the Corpus Christi seawall, a spot chosen for its proximity to the Art Center of Corpus Christi parking lot and for offering both daytime visibility and nighttime lighting. Friends of Farrah Fawcett has said the group aims to honor its former classmate and contribute artwork to the city.

Fawcett was born in Corpus Christi in 1947 and graduated from W.B. Ray High School, per the same MySA report. She initially planned to major in microbiology at the University of Texas at Austin before her path shifted toward Hollywood, where she was discovered by a publicist, became a model in California, and landed her breakout role in Charlie's Angels in 1976, playing private investigator Jill Munroe for one season on the show about three investigators who solved crimes for the mysterious millionaire Charlie.

An Artist's Tribute, Not Just a Fan's

The sculpture is being designed and cast by David Deming, an artist known for large geometric bronze sculptures and likenesses of famous figures, and based in Cleveland, Ohio. Deming taught sculpture and drawing at the University of Texas at Austin for more than two decades, and his work is represented locally by the San Antonio Museum of Art's Colorado Tripod, a geometric piece in its collection, the MySA article notes. He previously created the 8-foot, 1,000-pound bronze statue of Heisman Trophy winner Ricky Williams outside Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in 2012, according to The Daily Texan.

Fawcett's own artistic training runs deeper than her pop-culture image suggests. Before her acting career took off, she studied sculpture at UT Austin from 1965 to 1968 under acclaimed sculptor Charles Umlauf, after switching her major from microbiology to fine art, according to the UMLAUF Sculpture Garden & Museum. Umlauf served as her mentor, and the two maintained a lifelong correspondence. When Fawcett died in 2009, she bequeathed 199 pieces from her personal art collection — including more than 100 of her own original sculptures and paintings — to UT Austin's Blanton Museum of Art, per the Rockport Cultural Arts District; most of that work has remained in vault storage since her death.

A Second Statue and a Rare Art Show in Rockport

A second Deming-sculpted bronze of Fawcett, this one depicting her praying-hands pose from Charlie's Angels, is set to be unveiled in nearby Rockport in January 2027. It will be accompanied by a month-long fine art exhibition titled America's Sweetheart, which will feature 31 pieces loaned from the Blanton Museum's Fawcett collection, according to Remind Magazine. Fawcett frequently visited Rockport and modeled for local tourism campaigns in the 1970s, the outlet reports.

The donor group behind both projects includes former University of Texas defensive back Tom Campbell, a member of UT's 1969 national championship football team who attended university with Fawcett, per The Island Moon Newspaper. Campbell reportedly worked with local authorities to secure funding and placement without requesting municipal tax dollars. Under the agreement the city council approved, Friends of Farrah Fawcett will handle installation and ongoing maintenance at no cost to taxpayers, contingent on a final engineering site study, and the sculpture will be gifted to the city once it's complete.

A Neighbor to Selena's Waterfront Memorial

The Fawcett statue's planned location places it about 1,500 feet from the existing Selena Quintanilla monument, Mirador de la Flor, sculpted by local artist H.W. Buddy Tatum Jr. and dedicated in May 1997, two years after the singer's death, according to Wikipedia. That memorial draws an estimated 30,000 visitors annually along Shoreline Boulevard, a figure city officials expect the Fawcett sculpture could complement by giving tourists another waterfront photo stop.

Fawcett's local roots ran deep long before her Hollywood fame. At W.B. Ray High School, she was voted Most Beautiful by her classmates in each of her four years, and she maintained contact with high school friends throughout her life, Remind Magazine reports. Her 1976 red swimsuit pin-up poster, shot by photographer Bruce McBroom, went on to sell more than 12 million copies, becoming the best-selling poster of all time and leading to the swimsuit's induction into the Smithsonian Institution in 2011.