Virtual Art Tour

Glenna Goodacre, American, born 1939

Pledge of Allegiance

Today, Glenna Goodacre is most readily recognized as the sculptor of the bronze Vietnam Women's Memorial in Washington, D.C. Since it was installed in 1993, it has been one of the Capital's most popular sites. But for over 20 years before she created the women's memorial, Goodacre was well known for portrait busts and figures, and for interesting sculptural compositions of active children, which continue to be her favorite subjects. Before creating her first bronzes, she had a successful career for many years as a painter.

Her pieces are in numerous private, corporate, municipal, national and international collections. She has more than 40 bronze portraits in public collections in the United States, including sculptures of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Barbara Jordan, Katherine Anne Porter, Lt. Karl W. Richter, Dr. Norris Bradbury, Gen. Henry H. "Hap" Arnold and Greer Garson. In early 1998, she created a 7 1/2' standing portrait of President Ronald Reagan for the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City and the Reagan Presidential Library in Los Angeles. Also in 1998, she was chosen by the U.S. Mint to design a new Sacajewea dollar coin for the year 2000.

In an international competition for the Irish Famine memorial in 1997, she was selected as the winning sculptor for a proposed monument to the Irish in downtown Philadelphia, near Penn's landing. When finally funded, approved, created and cast, the massive bronze will be Goodacre's most ambitious public sculpture with 35 life-size figures.

Her work has won awards from the National Sculpture Society, Allied Artists of America, Knickerbocker Artists and the National Academy of Design. She has been a member of the National Sculpture and Allied Artists since 1977, was elected a Fellow of the National Sculpture Society in 1981 and, in 1994, she was elected a member of the National Academy of Design, where her work won an award of merit at its annual exhibition in 1997. American Artist magazine named her an American Art Master in 1996. For over 10 years she has been a participant in the Art in the Embassies program with work exhibited in our embassies in such diverse countries as Russia, Niger, France, Spain and Guinea. In 1994, she received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from her alma mater, Colorado College, and, in 1996, she received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from Texas Tech University.

She was born in Texas and began her art career there, graduated from Colorado College and studied at the Art Students League in New York. Goodacre divides her time between Santa Fe, where she has maintained a studio since 1983, and Dallas, where her husband C. L. Mike Schmidt has a law practice.