Mildred Howard on her first retrospective in a major museum: ‘My art is part of who I am as a person’

The octogenarian artist has recently seen her star rise within the art world – now the Oakland Museum of California will exhibit works from her 50-year-long careerThe artist Mildred Howard keeps Junipero Serra, the Spanish missionary who brutalized Native Americans throughout California, bound and blindfolded in her garage next to her black Mercedes.The 10ft-tall sculpture is part of her Untold Histories / Hidden Truths series (2025), in which she recreates monuments to slaveholders and colonizers and wraps them in what she refers to as “Make America Great Again red”. Serra, symbolically mummified and holding his signature cross aloft, cuts a haunting figure in the dimly lit garage surrounded by U-Haul storage boxes, cans of paint and abandoned furniture. Continue reading...