Ralph Ernest White, Jr. (1921-2004) Ralph White was born in 1921 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He attended the Minneapolis School of Art and the University of Minnesota. He once wrote that painting is "an undeniable and personal declaration of the gift of life." Just how passionately he believed this may be seen in the fact that, when he died of complications from surgery, he left a painting on the easel. As long as he was alive, Ralph White was creating art. He left behind six decades of work. In 1942 he received the Van Derlip Fellowship from the Minneapolis School of Art. His art was influenced by his experiences in the Army Air Corps during World War II. During the War, he traveled from his native Minnesota to the Lone Star State, where he met Ward Lockwood. Lockwood was an officer who also happened to chair the still-new Department of Art at the University of Texas Lockwood was interested in White's teaching at UT, and after the war, White made his way to Austin and joined the art department faculty. Over the next 36 years, he developed a program in graphic design and communication arts, taught an array of classes, and eventually even chaired the department himself in the early Seventies. In 1982, he retired as professor emeritus but continued to paint and develop an impressive career after more than 40 years of dedicated service. White's work has been included in more than 100 solo and group exhibitions, nationally and internationally. In 2002, he had a 60-year retrospective exhibition at Gallery 1313 on South Congress, In Austin, Texas. The following year he was named Texas State Two-Dimensional Artist and was inducted into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame. His works are housed in the permanent collections of many major art institutes including the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Witte Museum in San Antonio, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, the Ford Collection of American Art and others. He passed away on September 10, 2004. Selected Exhibitions Minneapolis School of Art, 1942, (prize); Twin Cities Exhibition, 1942, (prize); Texas General/Texas Painting and Sculpture Exhibition, 1947 (prize), 1948, 1949 (prize), 1952, 1953, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960; Faculty Exhibition, University of Texas, Austin, 1947, 1948, 1953, 1964, 1968, 1970, 1971, 1977; Corpus Christi Caller-Times Exhibition, 1948 (prize), 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958;Minnesota Centennial Exhibition, Winona Public Library, 1949 (prize); Texas Fine Arts Association, 1949, 1950 (prize), 1953, 1954, 1955 (prize), 1956 (prize), 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1976, 1977; Portraits, Texas Federation of Women's Clubs, Austin, 1949; Mid-Western Artists Exhibition, Kansas City Art Institute, Missouri, 1951;Dallas Allied Arts Exhibition/Dallas County Exhibition, 1951(prize), 1952; Texas Contemporary Artists, M. Knoedler and Company, New York, 1952; Denver Art Museum, 1953; D. D. Feldman Collection of Contemporary Texas Art, Dallas, 1955, 1956, 1959; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, 1956, 1957; Texas Watercolor Society, 1952 (prize), 1953,1955, 1956, 1960, 1961, 1971 (prize), 1972, 1973, 1974 (prize); A Survey of Texas Painting, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 1957; Southwestern Prints and Drawings Exhibition, Dallas, 1957; Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans, 1957, 1958; Austin State College, 1956;Kansas State College, 1954; Made in Texas by Texans, Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts, 1959;Texas Painting and Sculpture: The 20th Century, Southern Methodist University, 1971, (traveling exhibition); Parkcrest Gallery, Austin, 1971, (solo); Hill Country Art Foundation, Ingram, 1976. Selected Public CollectionsAustin Public Library, Austin, TX Corpus Christi Art Foundation, Corpus Christi, TXDallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NYLaguna Gloria Art Museum, Austin, TXMinneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MITexas A&M University-Kingsville, TXUniversity of Texas, Austin, TXWitte Memorial Museum, San Antonio, TXWitte Memorial Museum, San Antonio, TX