Throughout her career, Sheila Hicks has been a groundbreaking artist using textiles and fiber as her metier. Her contributions to the art world are widely recognized. She has brought textile sensibility to the visual arts, as well as to architecture and social issues. She has inspired many artists over generations.
Sheila Hicks was born in Hastings, Nebraska in 1934 and received her BFA and MFA degrees from Yale University. Following her studies at Yale with Joseph Albers, she received a Fulbright scholarship in 1957 to paint in Chile. While in South America she further developed an interest in working with fibers, and subsequently investigated potential approaches in Mexico, Chile, Japan, South Africa, Morocco and India, among other regions.
Among the most important of many exhibitions that have featured Sheila’s art are Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor (2006), which presented a groundbreaking selection of her small works, Minimes, and a major retrospective of her large scale pieces, Sheila Hicks: 50 Years, which debuted at the Addison Gallery of American Art in 2011 and travelled to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia and the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC. Her work is included in such collections as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, both in New York City; Museum of Fine Arts Boston; The Art Institute of Chicago; Museo de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile; and the Museums of Modern Art, Tokyo and Kyoto. Sheila holds Honorary Doctorates from the Ēcole nationale supérieure des Beaux Arts de Paris and the Rhode Island School of Design, and she has been awarded the Smithsonian Archives of American Art Medal and is an Officier des Arts et des Lettres, France.
Further Reading
Oral history interview with Sheila Hicks, Archives of American Art.
The Artist Project, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Recent Exhibitions
Solo exhibition; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, June 5 – September 4, 2016.
Solo exhibition; Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico.
20th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, March 18 – June 5, 2016. Stephanie Rosenthal, artistic director.
2016 Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, Hangzhou, China, September 2016.
Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947-2016, Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, Los Angeles, California, March 13 – September 4, 2016. Paul Schimmel and Jenni Sorkin, curators.
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