Ringo Starr's Peace and Love Sculpture in Beverly Hills

Ringo Starr's Peace and Love sculpture is an 8-foot polished stainless-steel hand making the peace sign. It stands in Beverly Gardens Park on Santa Monica Boulevard, between Beverly and Cañon drives, across from Beverly Hills City Hall. Starr designed it and gave it to the city, which dedicated it in November 2019, two years after first turning it down.

Starr's own hand, 8 feet tall

The sculpture is a model of Starr's hand making a peace sign, and he designed it himself. Jeremy Morrelli helped him produce it. It stands about 8 ft tall in polished stainless steel. Most reports put the weight at 800 pounds, as do Wikipedia, Genesis Publications and Starr's own website. Beverly Press gave "nearly 1,500 pounds", a figure that may include the base. No source says so, though.

At the 2024 birthday event Joe Walsh joked that Starr's real hand is a lot smaller.

Turned down in 2017, accepted in 2019

The Beverly Hills stop wasn't the sculpture's first. In 2017 it stood outside the Capitol Records tower in Hollywood.

That year Starr, who lives in Beverly Hills, offered it to the city. In September 2017 the city's Fine Art Commission voted unanimously to decline it. Its letter thanked him but said the donation didn't meet its fine art criteria. Morrelli told the Los Angeles Times that the ruling amounted to telling Starr he wasn't an artist and his work wasn't art.

The City Council later took the gift anyway. On 19 June 2019 the Los Angeles Times reported that the sculpture had found a home in Beverly Hills, and Wikipedia records that Mayor John Mirisch supported the placement. Beverly Press reported that the council chose the southwest corner of the stretch of Beverly Gardens Park between Beverly and Cañon drives. Starr paid for the sculpture, its base, the move and the installation. The city handled the engineering of the base and put in the hedging around it.

The dedication date

Starr and his wife, Barbara Bach, unveiled the sculpture in November 2019. The exact day depends on the source. Beverly Press gives 2 November 2019. Genesis Publications, which tied the sculpture to Starr's book Another Day in the Life, wrote that it was unveiled on "Saturday, November 8". In 2019, 8 November fell on a Friday and 2 November on a Saturday, so the Genesis date is probably a slip. We saw the Beverly Press report only as a search excerpt, though, so we can't confirm it fully.

Every 7 July at noon

Starr's birthday is 7 July. Since 2008 he has asked people everywhere to say "peace and love" at noon local time on that day. His website says the first gathering, at a Hard Rock Cafe in Chicago, drew about 50 people. More recently he has hosted the main event at this sculpture. At the 2024 gathering, guests posed for photos around its base.

For his 85th birthday on 7 July 2025, hundreds of fans came to Beverly Gardens Park. T Bone Burnett was master of ceremonies. Mayor Sharona Nazarian presented a city proclamation naming 7 July Ringo Starr Day in Beverly Hills.

Local press and Starr's own releases sometimes call the site "Beverly Hills Garden Park". It's the same place: the city park is Beverly Gardens Park.

Other Starr tributes in Los Angeles

Starr's individual star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, dated 8 February 2010, is on Vine Street outside Capitol Records. The Beatles' group star is on Hollywood Boulevard, about 6.2 km from the sculpture in a straight line.