OAKLAND — The Oakland Museum of California will open the exhibition "Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory" on June 12. The exhibition marks the first comprehensive retrospective of Howard's career.

"It's the first retrospective for me in a major museum. You have to be almost dead for that to happen," says Howard. "It's been an explosion of activity that's really gratifying to see. I think that there's been a concerted effort to make sure that we're uplifting the voices we should be. It really does feel like she's having a moment, and one that she's deserved and waited for for a long time," says Carin Adams, curator.

Howard received honorary doctorates from California College of the Arts and California State University, East Bay in 2023. The Bancroft Library acquired her archive in 2025. In April 2025, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship after 15 years of applications.

Howard lives and works in a 15,000-square-foot warehouse in West Oakland. The space has served as her residence, studio, and archive for nine years.

In 2017, Howard relocated from her South Berkeley studio after her landlord doubled her rent. "We all lived within a four-block radius. There was her house, and the house that she grew up in was around the corner. Three of her siblings owned houses," says Lamar Brown, her grandson. "Everybody was there in South Berkeley up until about ten years ago. The very last house that our family owned was sold two years ago," Brown said.

The exhibition will feature castings from Howard's 2001 public installation honoring union organizer Harry Bridges in San Francisco.

Howard created a series of glass bottle houses between 2021 and 2024. "Houses hold memories. They're like vessels of information," says Howard. Her work also includes the 2005 glass installation, Blackbird in a Red Sky, and her 2007 bronze sculpture, Kiss the Cake, depicting work gloves grasping a rolling pin with a cast of the artist's lips.

Howard keeps a 10-foot-tall sculpture depicting Junipero Serra in her garage in Oakland. It is part of her 2025 series, Untold Histories / Hidden Truths, which recreates monuments to slaveholders and colonizers wrapped in red material.

"Cooking for me is just as creative as making art. Food is a way of sharing love, and I put as much into that as I do into making work," says Howard.