Howard Ben Tré

Howard Ben Tré is internationally recognized for his unique sculptures and large-scale works of art for public and private spaces. Ben Tré is a pioneer in the use of cast glass as a sculptural medium and his work is included in more than 85 museum and public collections worldwide, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Art, Houston; the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nice.

Ben Tré’s work has been featured in 39 solo exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad, including a ten-year retrospective organized by the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, that traveled nationally. Other one-person exhibitions of sculptures and drawings include those organized by the Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain in Nice; the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University; the Toledo Museum of Art; and the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art. A retrospective exhibition including sculptures, works on paper, drawings, and public projects, organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, finished its national tour in 2001. An exhibition of his public art is currently on view at the Anderson Gallery, University of Buffalo. Ben Tré has lectured extensively about his individual sculptures and his public projects and philosophy in the U.S. and abroad.

Ben Tré’s breakthrough technical innovations have extended his mastery of cast glass and allowed him to create monumental sculptures that can survive the rigors of outdoor installation. Among Ben Tré’s public commissions are the award-winning installation of fountains and seating created for Post Office Square Park in Boston; the plaza and sculpture for BankBoston’s headquarters in downtown Providence, which received the 1998 Urban Design Award from the Providence Preservation Society; the fountain created for the lobby of the Hasbro Children’s Hospital; and a sited sculpture for the plaza at the Rhode Island Convention Center, Providence. Recently completed commissions include the newly created plaza and seating for the new federal courthouse in Las Vegas; the pedestrianization and street scheme redesign of Warrington Town Center in England; the creation of sited artwork for Siebel

Systems, and interactive artwork for the Thea Foss Waterway Esplanade in Tacoma; and plazas, with sculpture/fountains and landscaping, for Target Corporation Headquarters in Minneapolis, Bank of America’s Hearst Towers in Charlotte, and Brown University, Providence. Howard Ben Tré was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1949. He received a B.S.A. from Portland State University in 1978 and a M.F.A from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1980. He is a three-time recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a three-time recipient of the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowship. In 1996, his achievements in the visual arts were recognized by the First Annual Pell Awards for Excellence in the Arts. Ben Tré currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
Arco Corporate Art Collection, Los Angeles, California
AT&T Corporate Collection, Chicago, Illinois
BankBoston Art Collection, Boston, Massachusetts
Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL
Brandeis University, The Rose Art Museum, Waltham, Massachusetts
Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, New York
Brown University, David Winton Bell Gallery, Providence, Rhode Island
Butler University, Indianapolis, IN
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Centro Cultural/Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, Mexico
Chase Manhattan Bank Art Collection, New York, New York
Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, WI
Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia
City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio
Coca-Cola Company, Corporate Art Collection, Atlanta, Georgia
Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York
Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire
Dartmouth College, Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, New Hampshire
Dennos Museum Center, Traverse City, Michigan
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan
Federal Reserve Board, Washington, DC
Goldman Sachs, New York, New York
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo, Japan
Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Huntington Museum of Art, West Virginia
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana
J. B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky
Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, Michigan
Koganezaki Park Museum, Shizuoka, Japan
Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida
M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, Saxe Collection, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California
Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., New York, New York
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Nice, France
Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Lausanne, Switzerland
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Musée-Atelier Départemental du Verre à Sars-Poteries, Sars-Poteries, France
Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan
Newport Art Museum, Newport, Rhode Island
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida
Pacific Enterprises, Los Angeles, California
Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, California
PepsiCo Headquarters, Irvine, California
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Phillip Morris Management Corporation, New York, New York
Phillips Collection, Washington, DC
Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona
Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine
Prudential Insurance Company of America, New York, New York
Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin
Reader’s Digest Association, Pleasantville, New York
Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Rhode Island School of Design, Museum of Art, Providence, Rhode Island
Rockefeller Management Corporation, New York, New York
Rutgers University, The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, New Jersey
Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri
San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco, California
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, Arizona
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington
Seven Bridges Foundation, Greenwich, Connecticut
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts
Southwestern Bell Corporation, Houston, Texas
Tokio Marine Management, New York, New York
Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Vero Beach Museum of Art, Vero Beach, Florida
Weber State University, Ogden, Utah
Wheeler School, Providence, Rhode Island