Anita Huffington

Winslow - ANITA HUFFINGTON, RENOWNED SCULPTOR, DIES AT 90

Anita Huffington, a celebrated sculptor whose evocative stone, bronze, and wood figures meld classical elegance with natural form, passed away peacefully on March 15, 2025 in Northwest Arkansas at the age of 90.

Born on December 25, 1934 in Baltimore, Maryland, Huffington studied dance, drama, and art at the University of North Carolina, moving to New York in the 1950s to train under Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham. Her time in New York placed her at the heart of the burgeoning Abstract Expressionist art scene. While still a young dancer, she formed close friendships with artists Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Larry Rivers-as well as a larger, diverse group of sculptors, musicians, and poets. Over time, her interest in human form gravitated away from dance and toward the visual arts.

Influenced by classical sculpture and stimulated by ideas she encountered in the New York art world, Huffington returned to school. She studied at Bennington College and the University of South Florida before returning to New York City where she earned her Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts degrees at City College.

Huffington's first marriage, which ended in divorce, produced her beloved daughter, Lisa. During her time in Florida, Huffington met and married writer Hank Sutter. She and Sutter returned to New York when she entered City College and lived there until 1977, when, seeking solitude and inspiration, they moved to a log cabin in the Ozark Mountains near Winslow, Arkansas. They spent more than a year restoring it and building a separate studio. It served her well. Working from her remote studio surrounded by towering trees and rugged landscapes, Huffington began producing the sculpture that cemented her reputation. Inspired by ancient Greek and Roman statuary, her work also bore the textures of the natural world around her. Her figures seemed to emerge from nature itself.

Huffington garnered many honors and awards for her work during her lifetime. She was the recipient of a fellowship from the Arkansas Arts Council in 1992; a residency at the Chateau de La Napoleon Art Foundation in France in 1996; the Jimmy Ernst Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for her lifetime contributions in 1997; the Arkansas Governor's Individual Artist Award in 2005; and an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts from the University of Arkansas in 2014.

Her work, exhibited continually since the mid-1970s, has been shown at the O'Hara Gallery and the ACA Galleries in New York, the Valley House Gallery in Dallas, the Triangle Gallery in San Francisco, and the Harmon-Meek Gallery in Naples. It has been featured in numerous one-person museum exhibitions and included in many group exhibitions.

Huffington's sculpture Persephone was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where it is currently featured in the exhibition entitled Visualizing the Afterlife; her sculpture Cloud is part of the permanent collection of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville. Huffington's work can also be found in the collections of the Arkansas Art Center, Florida's Ashley Gibson Barnett Museum of Art, and the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia, as well as in numerous private and corporate collections throughout the world. A monograph with text by Amei Wallach, Townsend Wolfe, and the artist with photographs of her work by David Finn was published in 2007.

Huffington's life was marked by profound love and loss, all of which can be found reflected in her work. She endured the tragic death of her daughter, Lisa, in 1982, and the passing of her husband, Hank, in 2006. She viewed art as a means of processing and understanding life. As she wrote in her artist's statement for the exhibition "From the Forest" at New York's O'Hara Gallery in 2006, "Art shows us life, enriches it, and helps us to bear tragedy."

In 2015, she moved to Augusta, Georgia to work with her long-time friend and fellow Baltimorean, painter Philip Morsberger, with whom she exhibited for nearly two decades until his death in 2021. Huffington then returned to her beloved Northwest Arkansas, where she resided in the Fayetteville area for the final four years of her life.

Huffington is considered "a singular artist whose deep reverence for nature and classical antiquity shaped a body of work that remains timeless" (ACA Gallery). She is survived by a devoted circle of fellow artists, friends, and admirers. Donations can be made to the Lisa Huffington Duque Award Fund at the University of Arkansas.