A vital critical resource on the artist who helped transform the landscape of the Bay Area with her public artworks

Published with Oakland Museum of California.

The American artist Mildred Howard (born 1945) is best known for her mixed-media assemblages and sculptural installations that engage with memory, place, identity and the Black experience. Her work has been associated with the Black Arts Movement and distinctly Californian aesthetics such as Bay Area expressionism, West Coast conceptual art and San Francisco funk. In recent decades, Howard has produced numerous large-scale public artworks both within the Bay Area and throughout the country. These installations vary from site-specific outdoor environments, to architecturally integrated surface treatments, to stand-alone sculptural objects and structures.
This compendium covers the entire scope of Howard's multifaceted, politically engaged practice, featuring a selection of works that represent different aspects of her oeuvre alongside essays and an interview with the artist. Poetics of Memory also includes photographs of Howard's archive and studio commissioned specifically for the volume.