About Sculptor Robert Howard

About Robert Howard (1922-1999)

The noted sculptor Robert Howard served on the UNC-Chapel Hill faculty from 1951 until his retirement in 1988. A native of Oklahoma, where he received his education at Phillips University and the University of Tulsa, he also studied in Paris with the sculptor Ossip Zadkine. His brightly painted steel and fiberglass sculpture has been exhibited nationwide, and his work is in the collections of the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Duke University Museum of Art, and the Ackland Art Museum, as well as in private and corporate collections. A major work is located at the plaza of the federal building in Louisville, KY, and the model for the piece is in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Howard's work has been exhibited widely at such museums as the Whitney, MOMA, Cranbrook, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and LACMA, as well as at the 1965 World's Fair, and at private galleries such as the Royal Marks Gallery in New York City and the Lee Hansley Gallery in Raleigh, NC. In addition to being a teacher and adviser, he lectured widely on such topics as "Michelangelo and Rodin." The most recent exhibition, a memorial exhibition of 16 of his works, was held in 1999 at the Hanes Art Center, sponsored by the UNC Department of Art and the Lee Hansley Gallery.