Oakland Museum of California to present first major survey of Mildred Howard in 2026

The Oakland Museum of California announced plans this week for the first major museum survey of Bay Area artist Mildred Howard, a landmark exhibition that will span five decades of her work and open in June 2026.

The exhibition, titled “Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory,” will run from June 12 through October 11, 2026, in OMCA’s Great Hall and will bring together early works on paper, large-scale installations, archival materials and newly commissioned pieces, the museum said in an emailed news release.

Howard, who was born in San Francisco in 1945 and has lived in the East Bay for most of her life, is widely known for mixed-media assemblages and installations that examine memory, history, race and the African American experience.

Her work has long circulated within Bay Area art communities, though national attention has increased in recent years, including with the artist receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2025.

“Mildred Howard is one of the most important living artists in the Bay Area,” OMCA senior curator of art Carin Adams said in a statement. “Her work is simultaneously poetic and political, personal and collective. This exhibition celebrates her profound contributions to contemporary art, while affirming her place in the canon of American art history.”

The exhibition will trace Howard’s practice from early self-portraits and photo-based collages made in the 1970s, including a 1975 photo collage and screen print reimagining a $100 bill with the artist’s portrait, and Xerox collages from 1979—through later sculptural and installation works that address public memory and American history.

OMCA said the show will include archival materials from her personal collection as well as works drawn from institutional and private holdings.

Two major installations, Blackbird in a Red Sky (aka Fall of the Blood House) and Crossings, will anchor the exhibition at opposite ends of the Great Hall, with additional works presented between them.

The museum said the exhibition will also feature a new sculptural series responding to toppled American monuments, along with a newly produced media work drawing on film footage Howard shot during a trip to the American South as a teenager.

Additional works on view will include Black Has Always Been a Color, an installation incorporating glass bottles, wood, glue and high heels—as well as documentation of Howard’s public artwork Frame/Refrain, a collaboration with landscape architect Walter Hood.

A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition, featuring new scholarship and an interview with the artist conducted by Adams, the museum said.

Works by Howard are held in the permanent collections of multiple institutions, including OMCA, the de Young Museum, the Berkeley Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The announcement comes as OMCA continues to navigate heightened scrutiny around security following a major theft that targeted the museum’s collection. The incident remains among the most significant museum crimes in California in recent years.

In October, thieves stole more than 1,000 objects including Native American artifacts from the museum in a breach of collection storage. Surveillance video later released by police showed multiple suspects entering museum areas during the theft.