Mildred Welsh Hammond

Mildred Welsh Hammond was born February 25, 1897, in Red Oak, Missouri. She grew up in Kansas City, where her father ran a barbershop. Hammond was interested in art from an early age, and in 1924 she enrolled at the Kansas City Art Institute and studied with Wallace Rosenbauer, a celebrated regional sculptor. After graduating with a degree in sculpture, Hammond was hired to teach design and lettering courses at the Art Institute in 1932. The same year, she won a gold medal for her sculpture in the Midwestern Artists' Exhibition. For the next thirty years, Hammond flourished as a skillful teacher and a prolific artist.

Mildred Welsh Hammond was equally invested in painting and sculpture. She carved wood, fired ceramics and chiseled stone. She embraced physical processes and heavy raw materials. Yet her paintings were just as versatile. Hammond experimented with a range of media, including oil, acrylic, charcoal, ink and pastel. Across two and three dimensions, her subject matter consisted of human and animal figures. Like many early twentieth-century artists, Hammond sought new visual forms that departed from natural realism toward expressive abstraction. She emphasized curved lines and solid mass, exploring the physical and emotional weight of her subjects. Hammond exhibited her work regionally and nationally, winning several awards. She also completed murals for the Kansas City Southern Railroad and Kansas City Public Service Company.

Over the course of her thirty-year teaching career, Mildred Welsh Hammond taught every subject at the Kansas City Art Institute except fashion and industrial design. For many years she worked with Thomas Hart Benton; art historian Marianne Berardi noted that almost all of Benton's students also studied with Hammond. Students remembered her as a supportive mentor who balanced sharp formal instruction with emotional sensitivity. In Berardi's account, student Sam Lispi recalled that "she lost an eye when a chip of stone flew into it. But she could see more through that one eye than most of us can see with both" (Berardi & Adams, 89).

In 1950, Hammond received an honorary master's of fine arts from the Art Institute for her accomplishments. After her retirement in 1961, the school established a $25 scholarship for first-year students in her honor. Mildred Welsh Hammond continued to create art in Santa Ana, California, until her death in 1966. Her work is held in private collections nationally, and her legacy lives on through her impact on the art world of Kansas City.