Robert Boardman Howard

Robert Boardman Howard (September 20, 1896 – February 18, 1983) was an American artist. He is known for his graphic art, watercolors, oils, and murals, as well as his Art Deco bas-reliefs and his Modernist sculptures and mobiles.

Early life and education

Howard was born in New York City on September 20, 1896, to artist Mary Robertson Bradbury (1864–1963) and architect John Galen Howard

When he was six years old, the family moved to Northern California. He became acquainted with Alexander Calder in 1915 during the Panama–Pacific International Exposition.

He returned to California in 1917, joined the United States Army Signal Corps, and was sent to France.

In summer 1924, Howard joined his former art teacher Worth Ryder, and artist Chiura Obata on a three months camping and sketching trip to the High Sierra Nevada country in California. That summer, after he completed ornaments for the new Temple Emanuel in San Francisco and for the First Congregational Church in Oakland, he traveled to Europe to study Romanesque sculpture. By December 1926, he had returned to the San Francisco Bay Area via New York City, and accepted several commissions to paint decorative mural maps for the bay ferries. The following spring and summer he exhibited frequently in Berkeley and San Francisco. He also began to experiment with articulated sculptures and created for the Puppet Players Theatre a series of marionettes, which were praised by the master puppeteer James Blanding Sloan. Most of 1928 was spent on a grand tour around the world. His letters describing adventures in Europe, the Middle East, India, Ceylon, and Indonesia were serialized in The Argus newspaper. In January 1929, the Galerie des Beaux Arts staged a one-man show of his recent drawings, watercolors, and carvings to rave reviews. At the start of World War II he worked at the Camouflage Research Laboratories. Despite the challenges of his ever-increasing deafness, he began teaching in 1944 at the California School of Fine Arts (today's San Francisco Art Institute) and at Mills College in Oakland, where he was placed on the staff of the prestigious Creative Arts Workshop. In October 1947 he premiered his non-objective art film Meta, which depicted the slow-motion action of various colors dropped into water.

In January 1949, the University of California, Berkeley staged a massive retrospective exhibition of all facets of his art. Oakland Museum of California, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Kresge College at UC Santa Cruz, among others.

Personal life Howard was married to fellow artist Adaline Kent on August 5, 1930, after they worked together on the Pacific Stock Exchange building, a Miller and Pflueger architecture firm project. The couple had two children, Ellen and Galen. Adaline died on March 1, 1957, in an auto accident. 1929–1930 San Francisco Stock Exchange and the Stock Exchange Lunch Club, San Francisco, California Robert Boardman Howard Decorative reliefs, murals, brass banister for the staircase Featured on the interior doors, windows and ceiling beams. 1931–1932 Paramount Theatre, Oakland, California Robert Boardman Howard, Ralph Stackpole Decorative reliefs (also called graffito-work) Featured on the auditorium walls, stage, and ceiling. 1933 Phoenix Coit Tower, San Francisco, California Robert Boardman Howard Bas-relief, cast concrete Located above the main entrance 1939 The Whales City College of San Francisco, San Francisco, California Robert Boardman Howard Fountain, cast composite of concrete and black granite Originally sculpted for the Golden Gate International Exposition, and it later it lived in front of the California Academy of Sciences. 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, California Robert Boardman Howard Murals Four massive murals and assorted sculptures in the Brazil Building, California Building, Western State Building, and Ghirardelli Building. c.1950 Berkeley High School Community Theatre, Berkeley, California Robert Boardman Howard, Jacques Schnier Multiple bas-reliefs Located on the exterior of the building, Art Deco-style and very large sized. 1973 Naked Man UC Santa Cruz's Kresge College, Santa Cruz, California Robert Boardman Howard Naked man hangs from a rope anchored to the side of Kresge Town Hall.

Exhibitions For a more complete list, including some reviews and exhibited titles, see note 1939 – World's Fair, New York, New York; 1939 – Golden Gate International Exposition (G.G.I.E.), San Francisco, California; 1943-1950 – de Young Museum, San Francisco, California; 1948-1955 – Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York; 1949 – Retrospective, University of California at Berkeley, California; 1962 - World's Fair, Seattle, Washington; 1962-1964 – Salon de Mai, Paris, France; 1969-1974 – Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California. 1971 – San Francisco Art Commission, San Francisco, California;

Awards and honors 1925 – Ann Bremer prize for painting "Mount Tamalpais", San Francisco Art Association; 2013 – Preservation Award, Art Deco Society of California

Membership California Society Mural Artists, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco Museum of Art (SFMA), UC Berkeley Art Museum, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).