Continuing through October 11, 2026

“The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful.”
— Milan Kundera, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”

The first thing we encounter as we enter Mildred Howard’s survey exhibition “Poetics of Memory” is a pair of oversized keys, standing upright over two different bronze locks. They remind me of keys from my childhood — not Schlage keys, which were for everyday use, but skeleton keys. There is always something mysterious about skeleton keys. They suggest hidden rooms, forgotten places, and endless possibilities for discovery. Howard’s monumental keys, standing upright in their locks like sentries at the gallery entrance, create a dramatic entryway into the story about to unfold.

Howard captures our imagination, creating a sense of mystery and discovery. A few steps farther into the gallery we encounter an enormous padlock with its clasp partially open, a clear invitation to enter. As we continue, the exhibition gradually reveals stories from Howard’s life as seen through her art, while leaving room for us to construct narratives of our own. “Locks and Keys for Harry Bridges” (2001) is a tribute to the San Francisco longshoremen’s union leader and Howard family friend. Although the work has a specific personal and historical reference, its enigmatic form encourages our own associations.

Howard’s early work established her as an important figure in the development of installation art. “Reverend Doctor Magnolia Brown” (1979), a door transformed into a mixed-media assemblage, exemplifies Howard’s interest in transforming familiar objects and spaces into artwork charged with meaning. Two 1979 color Xerox collage self-portraits show her experimenting with technologies and materials new to artists at the time.

The mood changes as these early works segue into later pieces that more explicitly address political and historical subjects. “A Salute to Sojourner: Still Waters Run Deep” (2001) and “Volume I & II: History of the United States with a Few Missing Parts” (2007) confront African American histories of death, violence, racism, and erasure. In works from this period, such as “Chasing Beauty Too” (2007) and “Skillet to the Frying Pan: Sitting Black” (2001), Howard incorporates mirrors; rather than allowing us to remain outside the history being addressed, Howard implicates us in it.

Yet Howard’s work is never confined to a single emotional register. Her extraordinary range is evident in “Parenthetically Speaking … It’s Only a Figure of Speech” (2010), in which blown and hot-sculpted glass punctuation marks — a question mark, an apostrophe, and red and black periods — become objects for contemplating language and the ways meaning is communicated. The power of this piece emerges in part from the generous space Howard provides, allowing each work to breathe and communicate with an engaging openness. “Parenthetically Speaking …“ is among the most powerful of her smaller installations, in part because it is paired with Quincy Troupe’s poem “At the End,” which includes the lines, “In space the end is/the beginning/of another end … & death being/only a period at the end of a sentence …”

Music is another key element in the exhibition’s atmosphere. Bill Evans’ “Peace Piece” (1958) plays continuously in the smaller galleries, creating a reflective, almost meditative mood. It intertwines with Howard’s use of poetry, color, and considerable open space, its tempo suggesting a natural pace for visitors to examine and absorb her works. This spaciousness is significant, as her work addresses some of the most difficult realities of American history — the Middle Passage, slavery, racism, sexism, violence, and questions of self-worth. Yet the exhibition never feels oppressive. Instead there is room to think and feel.

This is particularly the case with “Crossings” (1997), in which Howard uses beauty to address the history of the Middle Passage. Hundreds of ceramic eggs, installed in rows on a low plinth, become contemplative objects as well as vessels holding a profoundly disturbing history. Eggs also suggest new life and possibility, even as the work evokes lives lost. Such duality is fundamental to Howard’s sensibility. She is able to acknowledge the brutality of history without relinquishing the possibility of beauty, renewal, and hope. Installed adjacent to a large, ornate mirror, “Crossings” intertwines beauty and historical trauma while ensuring that we remain part of the experience. Despite her political and historical engagement, Howard does not tell us what to think; instead, she creates situations in which we are invited to look, consider, associate, and recognize our own presence.

“The Studio” offers an intimate glimpse into the person behind the objects. It reveals the things she has collected, the people and ideas that have influenced her, and the environment in which her visual language has developed. “The Studio” is not merely a reconstruction of a workplace; it becomes another kind of self-portrait.

The exhibition’s large-scale installations are among its most compelling works. “Blackbird in a Red Sky (a.k.a. Fall of the Blood House)” (2005) surrounds us with red, projected into the space through a red glass shotgun house onto an adjacent reflecting pool in which dozens of blown-glass spheres are suspended in water. The work draws upon the African American tradition of bottle houses and bottle trees, transforming ordinary objects into repositories of memory, protection, and spiritual significance. Here, too, beauty and disturbance coexist.

The most memorable work here is “The Time & Space of Now, Moving Stills” (2024), which references a 1959 train journey Howard and her mother made from Galveston to the Bay Area. Howard was fourteen years old and brought her 8mm camera with her, photographing along the way. The installation consists of images of people seen through train windows that move across screens partially obscured by lace curtains. The work is captivating not only because it reconstructs a journey from Howard’s childhood, but because it transforms a private memory into a shared experience of seeing. We become passengers, watching fragments of other lives pass by.

Taken together, these works make “Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory” feel less like a conventional career survey and more a portrait of an artist thinking creatively throughout her life. The exhibition is, in many ways, a self-portrait — not a literal one, but one constructed from objects, memories, family histories, humor, loss, music, poetry, and the accumulated evidence of a life committed to making art. More than that, it draws us into a fresh relationship with Howard’s art even when we are already familiar with it. Her ability to evoke memory through visual poetry is particularly powerful because she does not insist that her memories belong exclusively to her. She offers us the choice to share them.

Perhaps this is why those oversized skeleton keys are such an apt introduction. They suggest that something is waiting to be opened. Howard gives us the keys, but she does not identify exactly which door to unlock. We enter, look, remember, and make our own connections. In the process, the histories and memories embedded in her work not only reveal something of her story, but are part of the larger, continually unfolding story we are invited to consider and share.