2025 Guggenheim Fellow Mildred Howard returns to 500 Capp Street this Juneteenth for Collaborating With the Muses: Part Two, presenting a never-before-seen installation from a new body of work titled Untold Histories/Hidden Truths. 

On 500 Capp Street’s outdoor patio, visitors will encounter a reincarnation of a Junípero Serra monument draped in red textile. Referencing the Serra statue in Golden Gate Park that was toppled in 2020—as well as many other monuments removed amid nationwide protests following the police murder of George Floyd—Howard reimagines this figure to engage public space and collective memory, contributing to the city’s ongoing reckoning with its civic monuments.

In partnership with the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Shaping Legacy project, 500 Capp Street will host public programs, performances, and community discussions exploring racial justice, historic preservation, and the reimagining of public art.

Collaborating With the Muses: Part Two follows the first installment of the series, which brought Howard’s work to 500 Capp Street, Anglim/Trimble, and Pt. 2 Gallery last year. Through Collaborating With the Muses, Howard reaffirms her belief in art as a catalyst for dialogue and healing—bringing her lifelong commitment to political engagement, site-specificity, and community-centered practice into urgent contemporary discourse.

In conjunction with the showing of Howard’s installation at 500 Capp Street and related pieces from the same body of new work on view as part of FOR-SITE’s summer exhibition at Fort Point, Black Gold: Stories Untold, tours to both sites will be offered throughout July and August, led by local artists such as Jonathan Cordero, Tricia Rainwater, Malik Seneferu, Weston Teruya, Anna Lisa Escobedo, and City Studio. Details available at 500cappstreet.org. There will be a free closing reception on August 21, 2025, 5-8pm as well.

Collaborating With the Muses: Part Two is presented with the generous support of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation and Shaping Legacy: San Francisco Monuments & Memorials, a project of San Francisco Arts Commission. 

Mildred Howard is best known for her multimedia assemblage work and installations. Howard completed her Associates of Arts Degree & Certificate in Fashion Art at the College of Alameda, Alameda, CA in 1977 and received her M.F.A. from Fiberworks Center for the Textile Arts at John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley, CA in 1985. In 2015, she received the Lee Krasner Award in recognition of a lifetime of artistic achievement. She has also been the recipient of the Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists (2017), the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2004/5), a fellowship from the California Arts Council (2003), the Adaline Kent Award from San Francisco Art Institute (1991), and the Douglas G. MacAgy Distinguished Achievement Foundation. Her large-scale installations have been mounted at: Creative Time in New York, InSITE in San Diego, CA; the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA; the National Museum of Women in the Arts; the New Museum in New York, the City of Oakland; and the San Francisco Arts Commission and International Airport. Her works reside in the permanent collections of: the Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; the de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA; the Museum of Glass and Contemporary Art, Tacoma, WA; the Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA; SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA; and the San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA, among others.