With a professional career that spans more than five decades—her work has seen Berlin, Cairo, London, Paris, Venice, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Kansas, and San Francisco. She has received awards and fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim, as well as honorary doctorates from California College of the Arts and California State University, East Bay, and has been honored with her own day in Berkeley and inducted into the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame.
Even with these accomplishments and awards, at the age of 80, the art world still seems to be getting caught up to who Mildred Howard is, and the true reach and impact of her artistry. Thus, her collaboration with the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) is long overdue. From June 12, 2026–October 11, 2026, OMCA will exhibit a retrospective of Mildred’s work titled, Poetics of Memory, which will feature select pieces from her 50-year career. This exhibition will serve not only as a recognition of a transformative career, but also as a grounding for the local, national, and international art world of this woman who, through painstaking work, perseverance, and creative expression, has etched her way into the pantheon of great Black artists.
A by-product of the second great migration, in which an influx of Black Southerners headed West looking for wartime jobs, Mildred Howard (b.1945) is a cross-disciplinary artist born in San Francisco, raised in Berkeley, and currently living in Oakland, CA. The child of community organizers and self-taught creatives, her practice spans design, sculpture, and mixed-media assemblages. Mildred’s artistic ethos and objectives have been to “make every piece reflective of the community where it exists, and to make people question or come up with their own interpretation of what is.”