Richard Serra

Sculptor

Spring 1954 Graduate

        Richard is considered by many experts to be America's foremost living sculptor. After Lincoln, he attended the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Barbara, graduating in 1961 with a BA in English Literature. After graduation, he attended Yale University earning both a Bachelors and a Masters of Fine Arts.

        In 1964, he was an instructor at Yale and worked with Josef Albers on the Interaction of Color. In 1965 he received a Yale Traveling Fellowship spending a year in Paris where he met Philip Glass. He spent the next year in Florence courtesy of a Fulbright Grant. In 1968 he began his long association with the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. It was in this period that Richard began working in cast and molten lead and lead rolls and rops and CorTen Steel.

        Richard's work has been exhibited in, and is part of the permanent collections of many of the world's museums including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, Louisana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark, Musee d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Tate Gallery, London, Westfallsches Landesmuseum, Germany and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. Many of his large sculptures adorn the world including Clara-Clara (1985) in Square de Choisy, Paris; Carnegie (1985) in front of the Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute; Fulcrum (1987) in front of the London Stock Exchange; Elevations for Mies (1988) at the Mies van der Roche Villa, Museen der Stadt Krefield, Germany, Afangar (1990) on Videy Island, Reykjcvik. Iceland, Greenpoint (1992) on the campus of the University of Nebraska and Gravity (1993) at the Holocaust Museum, Washington, D.C. He was also commissioned to design the Hall of Witnesses at the Holocaust Museum.

        He was awarded a Guggenhiem Fellowship in 1970. Other honors include Chevalier dans, Ordre des Arts des Lettres by France (1985); the Carnegie Award (1985); Wilhelm-Lehmbruck Award for sculputer (1991); became a member of Academie Universelle des Cultures (1992); elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993); and awarded the Proemium Imperiale by the Japan Art Association (1994).

        In recognition of his many accomplishments, Richard was inducted into the Abraham Lincoln High School Wall of Fame in May 1996.