Hilda Morris

born New York City, New York, 1911; died Portland, Oregon, 1991

BiographyA native of New York City, Hilda Morris began her formal studies at The Cooper Union and later trained at the Art Students League. In 1938, Holger Cahill (1887–1960), head of the Federal Art Project under the Works Progress Administration invited Morris to organize a sculpture program for the Federal Art Center in Spokane. In 1940 she moved to Seattle with her husband, the painter Carl Morris (1911-1993) and taught briefly at the Museum Art School (now the Pacific Northwest College of Art). During the course of her career, she exhibited in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland and created a number of public and private sculptures for sites throughout the Northwest particularly in Seattle, Portland, and Eugene, Oregon. In 1985 she was the recipient of a Ford Foundation Grant and the Oregon Governor’s Art Award. Her work was the subject of a major retrospective and catalogue at the Portland Art Museum in 2006.

Throughout her distinguished career, Morris focused on universal themes of human existence and mythology. Although best known for monumental bronze sculptures, she also created paintings that evoked the same emotions and energies.

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