Mimi Herbert
(1936)
关于Mimi Herbert
Mimi Herbert is an American painter and sculptor born in Brooklyn, New York, to immigrant parents. Her family relocated to Arlington, Virginia, when she was five. She earned a B.S. from Syracuse University (1958), an M.A. in South Asia Regional Studies with a focus on Indian art history from the University of Pennsylvania (1961), and an M.F.A. from American University in Washington, D.C. (1983). She also studied sculpture at the University of California, Berkeley, and drawing in San Salvador, El Salvador.
Herbert gained prominence among Washington Color School artists in the 1970s through her work with minimalist geometric shapes and bold color. Facing material constraints during residencies in the United States and Pakistan, she shifted from bronze to acrylic sheet sculpture, a medium she continues to use today. Her process involves heating acrylic sheets to a precise temperature, then twisting and folding them before they solidify. She has returned repeatedly to the American flag as a subject, first presenting folded flag sculptures in a solo show at Henri Gallery in 1975.
From 1990 to 1995, Herbert conducted fieldwork in West Java, Indonesia, resulting in her book Voices of the Puppet Masters: The Wayang Golek Theater of Indonesia (University of Hawaii Press / Lontar Foundation, 2002). Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Renwick Gallery, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Hunter Museum of American Art, and the National Gallery of Art, where her sculpture Red Triplet (1974) is currently on view in the East Building.