A native of Corpus Christi, Texas, Jesús Moroles (1950–2015) was awarded a 2008 National Medal of the Arts for his contribution to the field of sculpture. Moroles first earned recognition in the 1980s for his large-scale granite sculptures. He earned a BFA at the University of North Texas and subsequently held an apprenticeship with master sculptor Luis Jiménez. In 1980, Moroles traveled to Italy, where he worked in the quarries in Pietrasantra. During his lifetime, Moroles completed numerous public and private commissions nationwide, one of the most celebrated being the Houston Police Officers Memorial, a series of inverted pyramid forms, installed in 1990. Works by Moroles are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the National Museum of American Art, among many other institutions.