Mildred Howard: Collaborating With The Muses Part One

A key figure in the Bay Area art scene for over 50 years, artist Mildred Howard will launch Collaborating with the Muses Part One in September of 2024, a series of overlapping exhibitions at multiple venues. This ambitious project reflects the variation and scope of Howard’s multidisciplinary practice, to which large-scale sculptural installations, public artworks, and assemblages are central but which includes a wide range of mediums including print and film. A major theme uniting the various exhibitions is the dialogue and interplay between different artistic disciplines, particularly the important role of music—whether as an unseen part of a work’s genesis behind the scenes (as when an artist listens to music while creating in the studio, for example) or as an identifiable element incorporated into the final work.  

Collaborating with the Muses Part One kicks off on September 7 at Anglim/Trimble in San Francisco, who have represented Howard for more than three decades, with an exhibition centered around a selection of large-scale photographic prints, The Time and Space of Now, Moving Stills. Next, At Oakland’s pt.2 Gallery, Howard will debut a new installation inspired by Peace Piece, one of her favorite compositions by eminent jazz pianist Bill Evans. Howard has also selected internationally known Bay Area musicians to take part in this work. Howard will show her 2021 film The Time and Space of Now at 500 Capp Street, paired with a partial excerpt of the large-scale installation work that accompanied the film’s premiere at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art. 

Mildred Howard (b. 1945, San Francisco, California) is best known for her multimedia assemblage work and installations. Howard completed her Associates of Arts Degree & Certificate in Fashion Art at the College of Alameda, Alameda, California in 1977 and received her MFA from Fiberworks Center for the Textile Arts at John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley, California in 1985. In 2015, she received the Lee Krasner Award in recognition of a lifetime of artistic achievement. She has also been the recipient of the Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists (2017), the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2004/5), a fellowship from the California Arts Council (2003), the Adaline Kent Award from San Francisco Art Institute (1991), and, most recently, received the Douglas G. MacAgy Distinguished Achievement Award at San Francisco Art Institute (2018). Her large-scale installations have been mounted at: Creative Time in New York, InSITE in San Diego, California; the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington; the National Museum of Women in the Arts; the New Museum in New York, the City of Oakland; and the San Francisco Arts Commission and International Airport. Her works reside in the permanent collections of: the Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, California; the de Young Museum, San Francisco, California; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, California; the Museum of Glass and Contemporary Art, Tacoma, Washington; the Oakland Museum, Oakland, California; SFMOMA, San Francisco, California; and the San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California, among others.

Mildred Howard: Collaborating With The Muses Part One at 500 Capp Street​ is generously funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.