Richard Haas was born in Spring Green, Wisconsin in 1936. His family moved to Milwaukee in 1943 and Richard attended the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee where he received a B.S. in Art and Art Education in 1959. He went on to receive his M.F.A from the University of Minnesota in 1964 and taught Art at Michigan State in East Lansing, Michigan (1964 – 1968). In 1968, after moving to New York City, he took a teaching position at Bennington College in Vermont where he was granted tenure. In 1980 he decided to pursue his art career full-time and resigned from his academic position.
Richard has received numerous grants, honors and recognition of merit, among them, The American Institute of Architects Medal of Honor (1977), The Municipal Art Society Award (1977), the Doris C. Freedman Award (1989) and a Distinguished Alumnus award from his Alma Mater, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in 1991.
Richard Haas was elected as a National Academician in 1993. He was a member of the Academy Council from 2001-2010 and President of the Academy from 2009-2011. He also served on the Skowhegan Board of Governors for over 37 years.
Of more than 120 public art works worldwide, his best known are The Boston Architectural College; The Peck Slip mural in New York City; the Edison Brothers/Sheraton Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri; the Oregon Historical Society in Portland, Oregon and the Fontainebleau mural in Miami Beach (defunct) along with several major projects in Fort Worth, Texas.
Interior murals have also been commissioned for numerous public buildings in the United States. These include: The Nashville Public Library; The Periodical Room in the main branch of the New York Public Library; the Robert C. Byrd Federal Building & Courthouse in Beckley, West Virginia.
Mr. Haas paints daily in his studio in New York City and is active in following the contemporary art scene as well as avidly following museum exhibitions in the greater New York area. He recently had a retrospective, accompanied by a catalog covering over 65 years of his work, at the Century Association in New York.
A native New Yorker, Robert Neffson began his art education at age 12, taking classes at the Art Students League of New York. Then continuing his studies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Boston University, where he received his Master’s Degree in Fine Arts, Cum Laude. Robert also earned prestigious awards such as those from the Massachusetts Arts and Humanities Foundation and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Under the auspices of The Institute of International Education, he was given the opportunity to spend a year in Rome as a Fulbright Scholar. Currently represented by the Louis K. Meisel Gallery in SoHo, Neffson’s large scale paintings have been exhibited widely in American and European museums such as the Thyssen-Bornemizsa Museum in Madrid.
The paintings that will be featured in October 7's program are based on the lived experience of urban life and what it means to inhabit these spaces. Figures and their surrounding architecture have interactive roles and influence each other. Neffson’s paintings are not merely a rendering of a single image, but off an understanding of how these compositional elements construct a unique, vital image. They show us what our cities are and what they could become.
