Statues of Junípero Serra, Bronze statue at Mission San Buenaventura, Ventura, United States

The Father Serra statue stands nine feet four inches (2.84 m) tall, showing Serra with his head turned to the left, wearing a Franciscan cassock with cowl, sandals, and a rope belt with a hanging rosary. He holds a book in his left hand and a walking stick in his right. The bronze cast, installed in the mission garden in 2024, replaced a concrete original.

Ventura County commissioned the statue in 1935 through the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project, paying sculptor Uno John Palo Kangas $5,000. He built a full-size clay model in four months, then cast concrete on site using sand and gravel from the Ventura River. The concrete figure was unveiled on November 27, 1936, before Governor Frank Merriam and Mayor George A. Newell Jr. It was designated City of Ventura Historic Landmark No. 3 in 1974, replaced by a bronze cast in 1989, and the bronze was moved into the mission garden in 2024.

Serra founded Mission San Buenaventura, and the statue's public display became contested: in 2020 the city council voted to remove the bronze and the wooden replica, citing Serra's role in suppressing Chumash culture. The bronze was installed in the mission garden in 2024.

The bronze cast stands in the mission garden of Mission San Buenaventura, reached from the church and its courtyard rather than from the street-side park where the 1936 concrete figure first stood. The original concrete statue is not on view: it has sat in a crate at an industrial yard on Ventura Avenue since 1989.

Local wood carvers created a wooden replica of the original deteriorating concrete statue to serve as a model for the current bronze version. This handcrafted intermediate step shows how traditional skills played a role in restoring the historical monument.