Mildred Howard Wins 2026 Artists’ Legacy Foundation Award

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. Bay Area artist Mildred Howard has been named the 2026 recipient of the Artists’ Legacy Foundation’s annual Artist Award, the organization announced on Wednesday. Howard will receive an “unrestricted merit award of $25,000,” a prize the foundation gives annually to “a painter or sculptor who has made significant contributions to their field and whose work shows evidence of the hand.” “I am thrilled,” the artist said in a statement, calling the news “a complete surprise [that] comes at the perfect time. The award will assist in helping me to continue my practice. To be able to have support in these unsettling times is crucial to most artists.” Previous winners of the award include Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (2023), Nancy Rubins (2021), and Howardena Pindell (2019). The jurors of this year’s award included Anna Katz, a senior curator at SFMOMA; Jessica Bell Brown, Executive Director of the ICA and Virginia Commonwealth University; and Mary Weatherford, artist and 2014 Artist Award winner. “Mildred Howard has been a vital force in the Bay Area for decades, and has made a profound commitment to expansive approaches to art and community,” Bell Brown said in a statement. “We are honored to recognize an artist whose visionary work is an example of enduring generosity and achievement as a practicing artist and educator.” Howard has 16 works of permanent, public art installed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. These include a 22-by-20-foot bronze rococo picture frame overlooking the former Hunters Point naval shipyard; Delivered, Mable’s Promissory Note, at the Ashby BART station; and Salty Peanuts, an assemblage of saxophones—made in homage to Dizzy Gillespie—in the international terminal of SFO airport. A major retrospective of Howard’s work is on view at the Oakland Museum of California until October 18. Howard has previously been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Art in 2025, and the Lee Krasner Award in 2015.