Dreamers Awake (Tom Otterness)

Wichita, Kansas, United States

Public art

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

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Dreamers Awake is a bronze tableau by Wichita-born sculptor Tom Otterness, completed in 1995, at the Wichita Art Museum, which Visit Wichita places in the museum's Art Garden. A standing female giant and a fallen male figure are overrun by small cartoonish characters.

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Dreamers Awake (Tom Otterness)

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Site-level location · 37.6989° N, 97.3572° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

Two broken bronze giants lie overrun by a crowd of small, cartoonish figures on the grounds of the Wichita Art Museum, in the home town of the artist who made them.

Dreamers Awake is by Tom Otterness, who was born in Wichita in 1952. According to Wichita State University, he left for New York City in 1970, aged 18, to join the Art Students League. Visit Wichita says he completed the sculpture in 1995.

The Kansas Sampler Foundation describes a tableau in which the giants' fragmented bodies are overcome by a swarm of chubby little characters. The female figure stands about fifteen feet tall and is missing one arm. Her male companion lies at her feet in eight pieces. The small figures peer into his ear, point at him like tourists and cart off a large bronze footprint. A 2014 KMUW review adds that the standing figure is nude and holds a sickle, and that a hammer lies near the fallen figure.

The Kansas Sampler Foundation says Otterness made road trips from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s to visionary and folk-art sites, among them Samuel P. Dinsmoor's Garden of Eden in Lucas, and identified strongly with so-called outsider artists. The foundation named Dreamers Awake a finalist for its 8 Wonders of Kansas Art.

Sources place the work slightly differently: Wichita State University called it the museum's front lawn in 2008, the Kansas Sampler Foundation puts it on the southeast side of the museum, and Visit Wichita places it in the Art Garden. The foundation advises walking up to and around it. The museum says its Art Garden is free and open 24 hours a day.

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WHAT TO EXPECT

Visit Wichita places the bronze in the museum's Art Garden; the Kansas Sampler Foundation advises walking up to and around it. The museum says its Art Garden is free and open 24 hours a day; the building is open Wednesday to Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm, with free general admission.

ACCESS

On the grounds of the Wichita Art Museum, 1400 West Museum Boulevard, Wichita, Kansas. The museum's Art Garden is described as free and open around the clock; the building is closed Monday and Tuesday.

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