Discipline: Visual Art – painting

Mildred Thompson

Discipline: Visual Art – painting
MacDowell Fellowships: 1962, 1962
More: mildredthompson.org
Mildred Thompson (1936-2003) was born in Jacksonville, FL. She earned her B.A. degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1957 under the tutelage and mentorship of pioneering African American art historian James Porter. Thompson also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine (1956), earned a Max Beckmann Scholarship to study at The Brooklyn Museum School (1957-58), and attended the Art Academy of Hamburg (Hochschule für bildende Künste) from 1958-61. While in New York in the early 1960s Thompson’s work was purchased by The Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum. Thompson, however, spent most of the 1960s and 70s in self-imposed exile in Germany (predominantly Düren and Konzendorf, near Cologne) due to the racial and gender discrimination she faced at home. During this time, Thompson taught, traveled, and exhibited widely in Europe, while producing prints, paintings and sculptures. Thompson’s work can be found in the public collections of the American Federation of Arts, NY; the Birmingham Museum of Art; the Brooklyn Museum, NY; the Coca-Cola Company, Atlanta, GA; the Georgia Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art; Smithsonian Institute; and in Germany at the Leopold Hoesch Museum, Düren and in the Hamburg Museum, among others. Her work can be found in numerous private collections in Europe and the U.S., including the prestigious African American art collections of Larry and Brenda Thompson and the Mott-Warsh Collection.

Studios

Cheney

Mildred Thompson worked in the Cheney studio.

Cheney Studio was given to MacDowell by Mrs. Benjamin P. Cheney and Mrs. Karl Kauffman. Like Barnard Studio, Cheney is a low, broadly massed bungalow. Sited on a steep westward slope, its porches are supported on wooden posts and fieldstone with lattices. Although it still retains its appealing character, the original design of the shingled building…

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