Background
Maynard, Valerie was born in 1937 in Harlem, New York, AMERICAN WOMEN0.
Maynard, Valerie was born in 1937 in Harlem, New York, AMERICAN WOMEN0.
Student, Elaine Journet Art School, New Rochelle, New York, 1955-1960; student, Museum Modern Art, New York City, 1955; student, New School for Social Research, 1969; Master of Arts in Sculpture, Goddard College, 1977.
She has taught at the Studio Museum in Harlem, at Howard University and at the University of the Virgin Islands. Her work has been exhibited in many cities in the United States and in Sweden. She has been an artist in residence at both the Rochester and Massachusetts Institutes of Technology.
She also specializes in preservation and restoration of traditional art by people of color.
She was artist-in-residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem where she was a part of a group exhibition Labor, Love, Live Collection in Context, held November 14, 2007 - March 9, 2008. In January 1977, she was part of a contingent of hundreds of African-American artists who represented the North American Zone, exhibiting in FESTAC "77, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture in Lagos, Nigeria.
Her public art work, "Polyrhythmics of Consciousness and Light" is installed in a subway station on 125th Street in New York City. Karen Berisford Getty, in a Virginia Commonwealth University thesis, "Searching for Transatlantic Freedom: The Art of Valerie Maynard", examines the history of Africans in the Americas, and Maynard"s synthesis of African elements in her work.
Valerie Maynard had individual exhibitions at: 1971 American International College, Springfield, Massachusetts 1973 Howard University, Washington, District of Columbia 1974 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 1975 (traveling) 1983 Reichhold Center for the Arts, University of the Virgin Islands, Saint Thomas 1988 New Visions Gallery, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 1988 Caribbean Cultural Center, New York, New York 1989 Hammonds House Museum, Atlanta, Georgia 1990 Roadworks, Dorsey Gallery, Brooklyn, New York 1991 Towne Art Gallery, Wheelock College, Boston, Massachusetts 1992 Compton Gallery, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 1994 Roots Through the Heart, Hartnett Gallery, University of Rochester, New York Valerie Maynard has been in group exhibitions at: 1979 Black American Graphics Studio Museum, New York (traveling through 1984) 1985 (traveling through 1987) 1989 Caribbean Center, New York (traveling) New York Community College.