Mildred Howard

Mildred Howard (b. 1945, San Francisco, CA) is best known for her multimedia assemblage works and installations, which draw from personal memory, cultural history, and the material language of everyday life. Working across found objects, text, and sculptural form, Howard constructs layered narratives that address themes of migration, labor, spirituality, and social justice, often centering Black experience within broader historical frameworks.

Howard completed her Associate of Arts degree and Certificate in Fashion Art at the College of Alameda, Alameda, CA, in 1977 and received her M.F.A. from the Fiberworks Center for the Textile Arts at John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley, CA, in 1985. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Lee Krasner Award (2015) in recognition of a lifetime of artistic achievement, the Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists (2017), the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2004–05), a California Arts Council Fellowship (2003), and the Adaline Kent Award from the San Francisco Art Institute (1991). She received the Douglas G. MacAgy Distinguished Achievement Award from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2018, a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts, and, most recently, the Artist Impact Award from the Museum of the African Diaspora in recognition of her significant contributions to contemporary art.

Howard’s large-scale installations have been presented at major institutions and public sites, including Creative Time, New York; InSITE, San Diego; the New Museum, New York; the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Glass, Tacoma; the San Francisco Arts Commission; the City of Oakland; and San Francisco International Airport. Her work is held in prominent public collections, including the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; the de Young Museum, San Francisco; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; the Oakland Museum of California; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the San José Museum of Art.