Elizabeth Tracy Montminy

Elizabeth Tracy Montminy was born on June 5, 1911, in Boston, Massachusetts. She started practicing art before and during her teenage years by illustrating scenes from fairy tales through paintings and line drawings. After graduating from high school, she studied art at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and received her bachelor’s of art degree in 1933. She then studied at the Art Students League in New York City with Rico Lebrun from 1934-1935. As she progressed in her career, one could see that her artwork was influenced by Abstract Expressionism, Cubism and Surrealism.

Montminy was known for her murals and made several for the Work Projects Administration during the 1930s and early 1940s. Her themes for her WPA murals ranged from the history of Native Americans and English settlers, to workers constructing railroads. Her murals include:  Founding of Sagus (Sagus Town Hall, Sagus, Massachusetts, 1936), The Suffolk Resolves: Oppression and Revolt in the Colonies (Milton, Massachusetts, 1939), Chicago, Railroad Center of the Nation (Downers Grove, Illinois, 1940), and Bathers (Kennebunkport, Maine, 1941). Her Kennebunkport mural caused a controversy over the subject, a beach scene, and was removed from the post office by an act of Congress and replaced with a mural of clipper ships painted by Gordon Grant.

In 1940, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of her work on WPA murals. Later in life she made murals for the city of Columbia, Missouri, that depicted life in downtown Columbia.

Elizabeth Tracy married Pierre Montminy, a French-Canadian artist, in 1941, and then used the name Tracy Montminy. She taught art at the University of Missouri, Columbia, from 1948 to 1981, and was very dedicated to her students, inviting artists to speak and influencing many of her students’ artistic careers. She was a visiting lecturer at the American University of Beirut, 1963-1964.

Elizabeth Tracy Montminy died on October 23, 1992, in Columbia.