The Art of Resistance: Mildred Howard’s Long-Awaited Moment
There’s something profoundly unsettling—and yet, utterly necessary—about Mildred Howard’s decision to keep a bound and blindfolded Junipero Serra in her garage. Personally, I think this isn’t just a sculpture; it’s a statement. A 10-foot-tall monument to colonial brutality, wrapped in what Howard calls ‘Make America Great Again red,’ sits next to her black Mercedes, as if to say: history isn’t just in museums; it’s in our garages, our neighborhoods, our blind spots. What makes this particularly fascinating is how Howard forces us to confront the uncomfortable. Serra, a figure often sanitized in California’s history books, is here reduced to a haunting, mummified relic. It’s not just art—it’s a reckoning.
Howard’s first major retrospective at the Oakland Museum of California feels long overdue. In my opinion, the art world has a habit of sidelining voices like hers—voices that challenge, provoke, and refuse to be silenced. At 79, Howard is finally getting her moment, but it’s not a ‘sunset’ moment, as she wryly notes. It’s more like a dawn breaking after decades of darkness. What many people don’t realize is that her rise isn’t just about her talent; it’s about a cultural shift, a belated acknowledgment of artists who’ve been doing the work while the spotlight was elsewhere.
Her home-studio in West Oakland is a living testament to this intertwining of art and life. One thing that immediately stands out is how her space defies boundaries. A wall of steel casement windows, colorblocked with blue and purple glass, isn’t just decoration—it’s a remnant of her public art projects, a reminder of how her work spills into the streets. Her kitchen, a chef’s dream, isn’t just for cooking; it’s where she creates, where food becomes another medium for sharing love. If you take a step back and think about it, Howard’s life is her art, and her art is her resistance.
Houses, for Howard, are more than structures. They’re vessels of memory, carriers of history. Her displacement from South Berkeley, where her family had lived for over 50 years, isn’t just a personal loss—it’s a microcosm of gentrification, of communities erased in the name of progress. Her series of glass bottle houses and installations like Blackbird in a Red Sky aren’t just about architecture; they’re about the fragility and resilience of home. What this really suggests is that Howard’s work isn’t confined to galleries; it’s a mirror to society’s fractures.
What’s most striking, though, is how Howard’s personal history fuels her art. Her parents, dockworkers-turned-entrepreneurs, were also activists. Her mother fought to prevent the segregation of their Black neighborhood by tunneling BART tracks underground. This legacy of resistance is baked into Howard’s DNA. Her sculptures, like the disembodied gloves grasping a rolling pin in Kiss the Cake, aren’t just objects—they’re stories, memories, acts of defiance.
The retrospective, Poetics of Memory, feels like an excavation. Curators didn’t just borrow her art; they borrowed her life—yearbooks, love letters, a toddler-sized chair from her first art class. This raises a deeper question: Can we truly understand an artist’s work without understanding their life? Howard’s answer is a resounding no. Her art isn’t separate from her experiences; it’s inseparable from them.
From my perspective, Howard’s moment isn’t just about her. It’s about all the artists, especially women of color, who’ve been overlooked, underappreciated, and erased. Her Guggenheim Fellowship, awarded after 15 years of rejections, is a victory not just for her but for everyone who’s been told their stories don’t matter. A detail that I find especially interesting is how her archive was acquired by UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library—a place that once might have ignored her is now preserving her legacy.
As I reflect on Howard’s journey, I’m reminded of how art can be both personal and political, intimate and universal. Her bound Serra isn’t just a critique of colonialism; it’s a call to action. Her glass houses aren’t just about loss; they’re about resilience. What makes Mildred Howard’s work so powerful is its ability to hold contradictions—beauty and pain, memory and erasure, resistance and hope.
In a world that often tries to silence difficult truths, Howard’s art is a refusal to forget. It’s a reminder that history isn’t just in the past; it’s in our garages, our kitchens, our very selves. And as she continues to create, I can’t help but wonder: What truths will she uncover next? One thing’s for sure—I’ll be watching.
