Spokane Art Center | Instructors | Robert O. Engard (Northwest Art Collection: Works On Paper)

Northwest Art Collection: Works On Paper

Spokane Art Center : Instructors : Robert O. Engard

Name: Robert O. Engard

Born: 1915

Died: 2003

Nationality: American

Affiliations: Spokane Art Center Instructor, Washington Art Association, and Washington Print Association

Robert O. Engard was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and moved to Spokane with his family at a young age. He graduated from Lewis & Clark High School, attended Washington State College, and worked most of his life in the printing trade. After retiring he taught at Spokane Falls Community College and showed his artwork at the Municipal Art Center in Oklahoma City, the Denver Art Museum, the Oakland Art Museum, and the Seattle Art Museum. While working for the Spokane Lithographing Company he took classes at the Works Progress Administration's Spokane Art Center where he studied watercolor under Vanessa Helder. Engard and Helder convinced Spokane Lithographing Company to donate stone lithography equipment to the Center and to allow Art Center students to purchase stones for five dollars each. Engard instructed lithography at the Spokane Art Center from 1939 to 1941. Several of his students went on to work at The Spokesman-Review/Spokane Daily Chronicle. Robert O. Engard significantly contributed to the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture's W.P.A. art collection by donating his own lithographic prints and those by Spokane Art Center students and instructors, and archival records about the Spokane Art Center. He was also an active art docent at the Museum and used his expertise to identify and evaluate WPA artworks in the Museum's permanent collection. Sources: Manuscript collections, Joel E. Ferris Research Library and Archives, Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture; Collection records, Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, Spokane.