Renée Stout earned her BFA in painting from Carnegie-Mellon University. When she moved to Washington, DC, in 1985 she began to explore her African American heritage through a variety of media, including painting, drawing, mixed media sculpture, photography, and installation. Stout became the first American artist to exhibit in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art.
Her work encourages self-examination, reflection, and levity, pulling from current events and everyday life. Stout writes, “I see each one of my pieces as a fragment or installment in an ongoing narrative that’s my contribution to telling the story of who we are as a society at this point in time.” Stout is a recipient of the Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award (2018), the Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize (2012), the David C. Driskell Prize (2010), a Joan Mitchell Award (2005), The Pollock Krasner Foundation Award (1991 and 1999), the Anonymous Was A Woman Award (1999), and The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (1993).