John W. Rhoden (March 13, 1918 - January 4, 2001) was an American sculptor from Birmingham, Alabama.[1] Rhoden moved to New York in 1938, where he began studying with Richmond Barthé.[2] Rhoden worked in wood and bronze, and created a number of commissioned works including Untitled (Family) at Harlem Hospital Center;[3]Mitochondria at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan; Curved Wal at the African American Museum in Philadelphia; Zodiacal Structure at the Sheraton Hotel in Philadelphia; and a sculpture of Frederick Douglass at Lincoln University.[1]
Rhoden served in World War II, studied at the School of Painting and Sculpture at Columbia University, and was named a Fulbright Fellow in 1951.[1] He won a Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome in 1952. In 1956, he was a member of an artists delegation that visited the Soviet Union, Poland and Yugoslavia under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.[4]
After his time traveling with the State Department, the Rhodens returned to New York City in 1960. Shortly thereafter, John Rhoden left for Indonesia on a Rockefeller Foundation Grant to set up a bronze foundry at the Institut Teknologi in Bandung from 1961 through 1963.[5]
^Exhibition Catalogue: John Rhoden: Sculpture. Gallery 62, New York, NY 1982. Evans-Tibbs Collection, Artist file: Rhoden, John. National Gallery of Art Library, Washington D.C.
^Exhibition Catalogue: Sculptures of John W. Rhoden. Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia, 1971. Evans-Tibbs Collection, Artist file: Rhoden, John. National Gallery of Art Library, Washington D.C.