{"id":514711,"date":"2026-06-23T17:43:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T17:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/514711\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T17:43:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T17:43:17","slug":"mildred-howards-biggest-ever-exhibition-is-on-view-at-omca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/514711\/","title":{"rendered":"Mildred Howard\u2019s biggest ever exhibition is on view at OMCA"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Mildred Howard was a little girl in the late 1940s and early \u201950s, her mother would take her and some of her nine older siblings from their home in South Berkeley to visit the natural history collection at the Snow Museum, near Lake Merritt \u2014 a forerunner of today\u2019s Oakland Museum of California.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, her first major museum survey, \u201cMildred Howard: Poetics of Memory,\u201d is on view there. It\u2019s a knock-your-socks-off roundup of her life\u2019s work exploring identity and memory and documenting the African American experience: collages, mixed media pieces, immersive installations, sculptures, videos of her outdoor public art and personal memorabilia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Mildred Howard\u2019s sculpture \u201cBlack Has Always Been a Color,\u201d 2024, on display at the Oakland Museum of California, an assemblage of glass bottles, wood, glue, and high heels.\u00a0Photo: Christine Cueto, courtesy of the Oakland Museum of California<\/p>\n

Howard\u2019s archive was acquired last year by UC Berkeley\u2019s Bancroft Library<\/a>, where it will be preserved alongside the archives of artists such as Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and David Lance Goines. And last year, Howard won a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship \u2014 to file next to her two Rockefellers and two National Endowment for the Arts grants \u2014 after applying for the honor, wait for it, 16 times. A thread of resilience and determination runs through her life like a vein of gold.<\/p>\n

Howard was born in 1945 in San Francisco. Her parents moved to the Bay Area from Texas in the 1940s as part of the Great Migration, eventually settling in South Berkeley. Her father, Rolly, worked as a longshoreman in the shipyards of Hunters Point and her mother, Mable, opened an antiques business out of their home. Recycling and giving new uses to old things would become a lifelong hallmark of her youngest daughter\u2019s artistic vision.<\/p>\n

From her early days, Mildred was inspired by her mother\u2019s dedication to social justice. Mable \u201cMama\u201d Howard was an admired community organizer who led the fight to underground the BART line through South Berkeley<\/a>, preventing the predominantly Black neighborhood from being permanently divided. Mildred would incorporate her mother\u2019s activist spirit into her own art practice. \u201cArt is one of the last forms of freedom of speech,\u201d she has said. \u201cAnd we don\u2019t want to lose it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

An example of her many protest pieces is the stunning work of public art<\/a> \u201cDelivered, Mable\u2019s Promissory Note,\u201d erected in 2024 near the Ashby BART station, commemorating her mother\u2019s David-versus-Goliath victory in the 1960s and making good on the community\u2019s debt of gratitude. The swirling, semi-circular bronze sculpture draws inspiration from traditional West African metalwork, which served as currency and jewelry, and makes a statement in the sun.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cDelivered, Mable\u2019s Promissory Note,\u201d 2024, which can be seen outside the Ashby BART station, commemorates Howard\u2019s mother\u2019s fight to underground the BART line through South Berkeley. Credit: Ximena Natera, Berkeleyside\/CatchLight Local<\/p>\n

Howard started out as a ballet dancer, where she learned \u201cdiscipline and dedication,\u201d and she experimented with fashion design, eventually finding her most powerful voice in the visual arts. She came up in a grassroots artistic circle, working with neighborhood art organizations like the Berkeley Art Center and Fiberworks Center for the Textile Arts, where she was part of the organization\u2019s first exhibition. To help pay the rent as a single mother of twins, she became an arts educator at places like the East Oakland Youth Development Center, the San Francisco Art Institute the California College of the Arts, and the Exploratorium, where she developed school curricula.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thinking deeply about the physics of light, color, and structure transformed her art and led to some of her first installations. Carin Adams, the curator of the OMCA show, called Howard \u201ca pioneer in helping establish what we think of as installations\u201d \u2014 immersive, artistic experiences \u2014 alongside artists such as Yayoi Kusama, Christo, David Ireland, and Judy Chicago.<\/p>\n

Inside Howard\u2019s sunlit West Oakland studio<\/p>\n

\"\"Awards and photographs hang in the entryway of Howard\u2019s studio in Oakland. Credit: Estefany Gonzalez for The Oaklandside<\/p>\n

In 2011, Berkeley\u2019s mayor declared March 29 Mildred Howard Day. But six years later a doubling of her rent forced her out of her home in the city. She left during a decade when the Black population fell in South Berkeley by 30%, and moved into a more affordable home and studio in West Oakland, in a building that had been converted from a former factory.<\/p>\n

When a reporter and photographer from Berkeleyside and Oaklandside visited her at her studio earlier this month, we were greeted by her grandson, Lamar \u201cMYL3Z\u201d Brown, who doubles as her assistant. He\u2019s an artist himself and the co-creator of a new documentary about Howard, \u201cMemories in Motion.\u201d He led us through the pink-and-blue front door, past a dark basement and garage, up a narrow staircase, and into a loft space with skylights letting in the sunshine.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Howard with her daughter Timiza Joseph and grandson Lamar \u201cMYL3Z\u201d Brown in her Oakland studio on June 4, 2026. Credit: Estefany Gonzalez for The Oaklandside<\/p>\n

Dressed with an artist\u2019s eye, Howard wore a nubby, tangerine-hued sweatsuit, magenta sneakers, tortoise shell glasses, silver jewelry, close-cropped gray hair, and bright red lipstick. Though just a month out from shoulder surgery, she was full of energy as she gave a tour of the art-filled space.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Everywhere, there were bright pops of color: brick-red walls; a lollipop-colored leather chair; turquoise-blue dining room seats. Works from friends like Betye Saar, Raymond Saunders, and Romare Bearden, a foundational collage artist whose work inspired hers, were on display, along with as a collection of African masks and an oil painting of her grandfather.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"\"Inside Howard\u2019s studio. Credit: Estefany Gonzalez for The Oaklandside<\/p>\n

Her own pieces were mixed in, sparkling with wit: a wall-size mirror in a gilt frame (mirrors are a favorite motif because they reflect the viewer as well as everything in a room); her mother\u2019s old purse, now bronzed and sprouting angel wings; and down a short corridor into her studio, a somber, mixed-media piece called \u201cWe\u2019ve Got Blood on Our Hands,\u201d a globe splattered with bold red paint and a pair of brass hands holding it up, a pointed example of her creative re-use \u2014\u00a0and a searing indictment of warmongering. She said it wasn\u2019t created specifically to protest President Donald Trump because \u201cI don\u2019t want to give him the privilege of thinking he\u2019s even worthy of my art.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Offering her guests homemade banana bread, she said that after all the commotion of mounting the museum show, she was ready to get back to making. Art is the source of her resilience, and she said it helped get her through the most profound loss of her life, the death in a car accident of her son, Ameer, at 22, in 1970. She said she howled with grief in the middle of Adeline Street and then dug deep, creating 18 shows in 13 months. \u201cMaking art saved my life,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Howard\u2019s work explores layered meanings of home<\/p>\n

\"\"Howard looks through her archives. Credit: Estefany Gonzalez for The Oaklandside<\/p>\n

At the show\u2019s preview earlier this month, a huge turnout attested to the great interest in this beloved Oakland artist\u2019s work. And the atmosphere of her home carries over: the brilliant pops of color, especially her signature red; the importance of family and memories, both sweet and bitter; her deep seriousness alongside her humor and puns; and the re-purposing of random, found materials to express both poetry and political outrage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Case in point: The powerful, satirical assemblage from 2007, \u201cVolume I and II: History of the United States with a Few Missing Parts,\u201d in which two hefty U.S. history books are displayed on pedestals, side by side, with holes, perhaps evoking bullet holes, punched through their pages, gesturing at all that is omitted from the textbooks taught in classrooms. \u201cLooking at everyday things, I\u2019m challenged by the myriad possibilities for metaphor as a way of accessing cultural expressions of race and gender,\u201d Howard said.<\/p>\n

\"\"Mildred Howard, \u201cThe History of the United States with a few Parts Missing,\u201d 2007. Altered books, metal stands. Courtesy: parrasch heijnen, Los Angeles\u00a0<\/p>\n

One throughline of the carefully curated works in the exhibit is Howard\u2019s questioning of the many layered meanings of home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Is home a safe place to protect family and produce art as evidenced by the exhibit\u2019s re-creation of Howard\u2019s home-studio, with its red walls and decades of preserved memorabilia, such as her Berkeley High School yearbook and decorative postcards from artist friends?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Or is home a place to scare away lurking demons as in one of her iconic \u201cbottle houses\u201d? The mixed-media piece \u201cBlack Has Always Been a Color\u201d (2024) is a small, black, wooden, open house-like structure, filled with glowing green and black bottles, inspired by the centuries-old African American folk tradition of building \u201cbottle trees\u201d or \u201csticking bottles neckdown in the front yard to ward off bad spirits,\u201d Howard explained.<\/p>\n

Or can home sometimes be a threatening place as in \u201cBlackbird in a Red Sky (a.k.a. Fall of the Blood House)\u201d (2002), one of the show\u2019s stand-out installations that nestles a red, almost life-size, glass house next to a small pond filled with crimson glass apples.\u00a0 It\u2019s beautiful \u2014 with a subtext of menace.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Howard\u2019s \u201cBlackbird in a Red Sky (a.k.a Fall of the Blood House),\u201d on display at OMCA. Plate glass, blown elements, stainless steel flashing, and wood.\u00a0Photo: Christine Cueto. Courtesy: Oakland Museum of California<\/p>\n

\u201cA house is supposed to be a safe place, but it\u2019s not always that way,\u201d Howard said. \u201cGreat things happen at home and so do bad things. A house can be a place that holds secrets and some of the worst crimes have taken place at home.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Glancing at those delicate floating apples, she added, \u201cIf Eve had known that we women would have such a hard time, that we would still be fighting for our rights, she probably would not have bitten an apple.\u201d She sighed. \u201cAnd the piece is still relevant today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Howard is always bringing disparate elements together, both ideas and materials.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fragility of life and the sustenance of life,\u201d are showcased together, Howard said, in her work \u201cCrossings\u201d (1997, 2026). A huge trapezoid form is filled with hundreds of ceramic eggs glowing in ambient rose-colored light. A gilt-edge mirror sits off to a corner reflecting the viewer, the piece, and \u201cBlackbird\u201d across the room.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Howard\u2019s \u201cCrossings,\u201d 1997, 2026, on view at OMCA. Plate glass, blown elements, stainless steel flashing, and wood.\u00a0Photo: Christine Cueto. Courtesy: Oakland Museum of California<\/p>\n

The installation was inspired by a trip Howard made to South Carolina, and it evokes the tragedy of the Middle Passage, in which 14 million to 16 million enslaved people lost their lives. \u201cThose millions of people lost their lives so I could sit here and make art,\u201d said Howard. \u201cThat\u2019s a real gift.\u201d<\/p>\n

Howard never forgets all the people it took to get her here \u2014 her ancestors, her parents, her family, fellow artists. But also, at 81, she keeps focused on her next work. At the end of our interview, she quoted a line from the poet Quincy Troupe, her sometime collaborator: \u201cAnd at the end, there is space to begin again, always space at the end to begin again.\u201d<\/p>\n

It sounded like her life philosophy.<\/p>\n

\u201cMildred Howard: The Poetics of Memory<\/a>,\u201d Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland, through Oct. 18, $25.<\/p>\n

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