Timeline

1936

Born in the United States

Mimi Herbert is an American painter and sculptor. Born in 1936, Mimi's family experienced war and uncertainty which inspired a fascination with the American flag as an image for sculpture. She has been creating flag sculptures along with drawings, prints, and other sculptural images since the 1970's. Her complex sculptures are formed by heating sheets of acrylic to a precise temperature, then quickly twisting and folding them before they cool and solidify in only thirty to forty seconds. Herbert exhibited at Gallery K and at the Henri Gallery in Washington, D.C. until the closing of Henri in the late eighties and the untimely deaths of Gallery K’s owners in 2003. Herbert's work is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection, Bloomfield Hills Michigan, the American University, Washington D.C., and in private collections in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Indonesia and El Salvador. In 2002 the Smithsonian National Museum of American History acquired her “Tribute” sculptures created in the wake of the tragedy of 9/11. She was the single artist in the Museum’s Memorial Exhibition. In 1976, she was commissioned to create an 175 foot Bicentennial Pennant sculpture that spanned the facade of the 17th street facade of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.