Maude Kerns

Maude Kerns was born into an early pioneer family in Oregon before the territory became a state. As good schools were scarce on the frontier, she moved to New York in the early 1900s to study at the Columbia University Teachers College. There she met and studied art with the modernist Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922). After graduation she moved first to Seattle and then to Eugene, Oregon to teach art at the University of Oregon where she worked until 1947. She later founded the Eugene Art Center, renamed the Maude Kerns Art Center in 1961. Throughout her career, she continued to travel and study both in Europe and the United States keeping abreast of the latest trends in contemporary art.