Glenna Goodacre

Glenna Maxey Goodacre (born 1939 in Lubbock, Texas, U.S.) is a sculptor well known for having designed the obverse of the Sacagawea dollar that entered circulation in the United States in 2000. She also designed the Vietnam Women's Memorial located in Washington, D.C., of which there is a smaller replica at Vietnam Veterans Memorial State Park in Angel Fire, New Mexico. Her daughter is world-famous 1980s supermodel Jill Goodacre.

Art

Goodacre is honored by the naming of a downtown Lubbock street which extends from the Jones AT&T Stadium at University Avenue to the east.

Goodacre's art appears in public, private, municipal and museum collections throughout the U.S. Her bronze sculptures feature lively expression and texture. Goodacre graduated from Monterey High School in Lubbock. She then completed studies at Colorado College and classes at the Art Students League in New York. She became a successful Texas painter, but for the last thirty years she has concentrated mainly on sculpture. She has simultaneously been an active wife, mother, and now grandmother.

Her most well-known work is the Vietnam Women’s Memorial installed in Washington, D.C. in 1993. Goodacre was selected in 1997 as sculptor for the monumental Irish Memorial in Philadelphia. Completed and installed at Penn’s Landing in 2003, the massive bronze is her most ambitious public sculpture—with 35 life-size figures. In 1998, her 8-foot (2.4 m) standing portrait of Ronald W. Reagan was unveiled at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. Another cast is at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. After a nationwide competition for a Sacagawea dollar coin design in 1999, Goodacre’s rendering for the face was unveiled at the White House by First Lady Hillary Clinton.

In 2004, her heroic bronze portrait of legendary West Point Coach Colonel Earl "Red" Blaik was dedicated at the National College Football Hall Of Fame. In 2004, she also designed the Children’s Medal of Honor awarded to First Lady Laura Bush in Dallas by the Greater Texas Community Partners.

An academician of the National Academy of Design and a fellow of the National Sculpture Society, Goodacre has won many awards at their exhibitions in New York. Goodacre has received honorary doctorates from Colorado College, her alma mater, and Texas Tech University in her hometown of Lubbock. In 2002, her work won the James Earl Fraser Sculpture Award at the Prix De West Exhibition. In 2003, she was awarded the prestigious Texas Medal Of Arts and later that year was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall Of Fame in Fort Worth.

In 2005 a street in Lubbock was named Glenna Goodacre Boulevard, and in Santa Fe at the State Capitol, Governor Bill Richardson presented Goodacre with the New Mexico Governor’s Award For Excellence in the Arts. In 2006, Richardson appointed her to the State Quarter Design Committee to develop a U.S. quarter coin representing New Mexico.

In March 2007 Glenna suffered a fall and head injury. In August, she returned home from the hospital to resume her normal activities with her family, friends, and two poodles. She makes daily visits to her studio which is by her home.

Glenna is a life-long visitor to New Mexico and a resident since 1983. She and her husband, attorney C.L. "Mike" Schmidt, have homes in Santa Fe and Pecos.

Goodacre was inducted in 1997 into the West Texas Walk of Fame in Lubbock.

In 1997, Goodacre was inducted into the West Texas Walk of Fame in Lubbock. Eleven years later, Goodacre was named the 2008 "Notable New Mexican". This honor, bestowed by the Albuquerque Art and History Museum’s Foundation, celebrates extraordinary, living New Mexicans who contribute significantly to the public good. A portrait of Goodacre by renowned artist Daniel Greene is in the permanent collection of the Albuquerque Museum, and is currently on display.

In August 2005, the former 8th Street in the vicinity of Texas Tech in Lubbock was renamed Glenna Goodacre Boulevard.

There will be a retrospective of Goodacre's work September 25, 2009 at Nedra Matteucci Galleries in Santa Fe, NM.

Injury

Goodacre was transferred to the Craig Hospital brain trauma center in Englewood, Colorado, after a fall injury sent her into a coma on March 13, 2007. An MRI disclosed that Goodacre had a massive head injury. Goodacre's husband told reporters, "We don't know if Glenna fainted and fell, or had a mini-stroke and fell." Schmidt said on April 9 that his wife had made major progress in the past three days. While otherwise bedridden, she was able to stand briefly with assistance and could utter the words "yes" and "okay."

On January 18, 2008, Goodacre was well enough to unveil her new sculpture Crossing the Prairie at the St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe. She is said to have recovered very well, although she still has problems with concentration because of aphasia.

Goodacre's father, Homer Glen Maxey, who died in July 1990, was a prominent Lubbock builder, developer and civic leader. A graduate of Texas Tech University in 1931, he was also the first president of the Red Raiders Club. He served on the Lubbock City Council 1956-1960. A 100-acre (0.40 km²) city park bears the name of Homer Maxey's father, James Barney Maxey (1881–1953), also a prodigious builder and civic leader in Lubbock and the South Plains region.

Selected portraiture

• Stephen F. Austin, Anheuser-Busch, SeaWorld, San Antonio, Texas
• Dan Blocker (Bonanza co-star), 1973, O'Donnell, Texas, across from O'Donnell Heritage Museum
• Dwight D. Eisenhower 1987, Anheuser-Busch, SeaWorld of Texas
• William Curry Holden, first director of the Museum of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, located in rotunda of museum entrance
• Ralph A. Johnston, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City
• Scott Joplin, 1987, Anheuser-Busch, Sea World of Texas
• Barbara Jordan, 1987, Anheuser-Busch, Sea World of Texas
• Katherine Ann Porter, 1986, Anheuser-Busch, Sea World of Texas
• Ronald Reagan, After the Ride, 1998, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, Simi Valley
• Eric Sloane, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City

Selected public monuments

• Rescue, (1999), Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Blount Cultural Park, Montgomery, Alabama
• The Puddle Jumpers, (1989), Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Blount Cultural Park, Montgomeryt, Alabama
• Raising the Flag or Pledge of Allegiance, (1991), Stroh's Plaza, Detroit, Michigan
• Vietnam Women's Memorial, National Mall, Washington D.C. (1993)
• Philosopher's Rock. (1994), Austin, Texas
• Irish Memorial, (2003) Penn's Landing, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Crossing the Prairie, 2002, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Amarillo, Texas

References

• Edson, Gary, ed., Glenna Goodacre: The First 25 Years, Museum of Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, 1995
• Kvaran, Einar Einarsson, Monuments in America, unpublished manuscript
• Lubbock native Goodacre talks of joyous homecoming

External links

• Glenna Goodacre's website
• Renowned local sculptor comatose after suffering head injury
• Artist's condition improving; Goodacre moving to Colorado brain injury facility
• Bill Goodacre's biography
• Tim Goodacre's biography