William Wallace Rosenbauer

William Wallace Rosenbauer was born on June 12, 1900, in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. He attended the St. Louis School of Fine Arts and Washington University in St. Louis. He also studied art with Alexander Archipenko.

In 1944 he was named the director of the Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design, after serving as chair of the sculpture department for twenty years. He resigned as director in the spring of 1949. While he was teaching at the Art Institute, he also taught at other local academic institutions in Kansas City, such as the Barstow School, Park College in Parkville, and St. Mary’s College in Leavenworth.

In 1950, Rosenbauer sculpted a crucifix for the exterior of Calvary Lutheran Church at 75th and Oak, and religious figures for St. Peter’s Catholic Church at Meyer and Holmes, Kansas City Missouri. He also made sculptures for the Jacob L. Loose Memorial Park, Mount Olivet Cemetery, and for the campus  of the University of Kansas City (now University of Missouri-Kansas City.)

Later, Rosenbauer was an instructor at the Parsons School of Design in New York from 1950-1953, and at the University of Connecticut, Stamford Branch. He also was the assistant director and curator of the Stamford Museum and Nature Center.

Rosenbauer participated in many exhibitions, including the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition in 1936, 1947 and 1948, the Art Institute of Chicago annual exhibition in 1934, 1936, 1939 and 1940, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts exhibition in 1927, 1929, 1932 and 1936. He also exhibited at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, and had a twenty-five year retrospective at the Wellons Gallery in New York in 1950, as well as in several other exhibitions.

Rosenbauer also belonged to the American Artists Professional League and the American Institute of Decorators. He died on September 29,1968, in Danbury, Connecticut.