John Rhoden
John Walter Rhoden Jr (born March 13, 1918 in Birmingham; died January 4, 2001 in New York City) was a sculptor.
Rhoden was the son of John and Maime Shorter Rhoden. The family resided on 11th Avenue North and John Jr. attended Industrial High School where his artistic skills were recognized. He had the opportunity to visit William Grant and Lamar Dodd, both of whom encouraged him to develop his talents. He was 16 when he completed a portrait bust of principal Arthur Parker, for whom the school was later renamed. He graduated with the class of 1934.
Rhoden earned a scholarship to study art at Talladega College, where he met renowned muralist Hale Woodruff. At Woodruff's recommendation, Rhoden moved to New York in 1938. He soon fell under the sway of sculptors Augusta Savage and Richmond Barthé. During his Army Reserve Corps service, Rhoden was commissioned to create several portrait busts of U.S. Generals.
After his tour, Rhoden enrolled in the New School for Social Research, then in the School of Painting and Sculpture at Columbia University. While there he studied under Oronzio Maldarelli, Hugo Robus and William Zorach. While there he met Richenda Phillips Kay, a fellow art student whose first husband had been killed during the war.
Rhoden was awarded the Rosenwald Fellowship to continue his studies in 1947. In 1947, 1948 and 1950 he was given the first prize for sculpture at Columbia. In 1950 he added a scholarship from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and a Tiffany Award. Followed by a Fulbright fellowship in 1951 and the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1952, renewed twice, which allowed him to study at the American Academy in Rome, Italy through 1954. He and Richenda were married in Rome that year.
From 1955 to 1959 Rhoden was one of a small group of artists selected by the United States Department of State to tour around the world for a program formalized under the auspices of the International Cultural Exchange and Fair Participation Act of 1956. He visited Iceland, Ireland, Finland, Norway, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Egypt, Kenya, Rhodesia, Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, the USSR, Poland, Yugoslavia, India, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Korea, Japan and the Phillipines.
John and Richenda Rhoden purchased a former livery stable on Cranberry Street in Brooklyn Heights in 1960 and made use of it for studio and exhibition space.
In 1961 Rhoden was given an honorarium by Howard University, a Guggenheim fellowship and a Rockefeller grant. The latter grant allowed him to establish a bronze foundry at Indonesia's Bandung Institute of Technology over a 2-year period. Most of his work during the 1960s and 1970s drew explicitly from his exposure to the world's native cultures during his travels. He was further inspired by Richenda's Cherokee and Minominee heritage.
He went on to receive commissions for the Harlem Hospital, Belleview Hospital and the Metropolitan Hospital in New York City, for Clifton High School in Baltimore, Maryland, and for the Sheraton Hotel and the Afro-American Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His work has been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Whitney Museum of American Art among several others.
Later in his career, both Rhodens became involved in arts education in the New York City schools, and were leaders in the Cranberry Street Neighborhood Association. John Rhoden was appointed to the New York City Arts Commission.
In 1973 two of Rhoden's sculptures were exhibited as part of an "Afro-American Invitational" event in Birmingham. From January 20 to March 17, 1985 the Birmingham Museum of Art exhibited a retrospective of Rhoden's sculpture. In 1992 he was appointed head of the Art Commission of the City of New York. He and Richanda operated a gallery in Brooklyn Heights.
Rhoden died in January 2001 at the St Albans VA Medical Center in Queens. Richenda died in 2016. Their residence in Brooklyn is now home to the offices and reading room of the Asia Art Archive in America.
In October 2024 the Birmingham Museum of Art exhibited "Determined to Be: The Sculpture of John Rhoden," with 50 works, organized by Brittany Webb of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Rhoden works in Birmingham
- Portrait bust of A. H. Parker (1934) at Parker High School
- Fred Shuttlesworth statue, (1992) at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
References
- Appelhof, Ruth Ann (1984) "Sculpture by John Rhoden" Exhibition catalog. Birmingham Museum of Art.
- Bowles, Pete (January 17, 2001) "John Rhoden, 84, Sculptor." The New York Times, p. A41
External links
- Rediscovering John Rhoden archival collection at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts