Myra Mimlitsch-Gray is an American metalsmith, artist, critic, and educator living and working in Stone Ridge, New York. Mimlitsch-Gray's work has been shown nationally at such venues as the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Museum of the City of New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and Museum of Arts and Design. Her work has shown internationally at such venues as the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Stadtisches Museum Gottingen, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and is held in public and private collections in the U.S, Europe, and Asia.
Mimlitsch-Gray was born in Camden, New Jersey in 1962, the daughter of Paul Joseph Mimlitsch and Myra Elizabeth Buck She was first introduced to metalsmithing and jewelry in high school when she participated in a summer program at Carnegie Mellon University. Mimlitsch-Gray went on to receive her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts) in 1984 where she studied with Sharron Church and majored in Metals and Jewelry. Afterwards, Mimlitsch-Gray attended Cranbrook Academy of Art where she studied with Gary Griffin, and received her Masters of Fine Art in Metalsmithing in 1986.
Mimlitsch-Gray is on the faculty and is the head of the Metal Program at the State University of New York at New Paltz. She also has taught workshops at Penland School of Crafts, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, University of the Arts, Rhode Island College, among others.
Mimlitsch-Gray has received awards for her work and contributions to the metalsmithing community, including election to the 2016 College of American Craft Fellows by the American Craft Council, and being named a Master Metalsmith by the Metal Museum.
In 1998, SUNY New Paltz recognized Mimlitsch-Gray's educational impact, awarding her the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 2018, Mimlitsch-Gray received another Chancellor's Award of Excellence from SUNY New Paltz for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Studies.
She has received fellowships from public and private institutions. In 1995 she was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowships from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation; in 2012 she received the United States Artists Glasgow Fellowship in Craft and Traditional Arts; and in 1997, 2012, and again in 2015 she received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts.
