Adaline Kent

Adaline Dutton Kent (1900–1957) or Adaline Kent Howard was an American sculptor from California. She created abstract sculptures with forms inspired by the natural landscape.

Kent was born on August 7, 1900 in Kentfield, California, one of seven children of women's rights activist Elizabeth Thacher Kent and U.S. congressman William Kent. Her grandfather, Albert Emmett Kent, had purchased an 800-acre farm in 1871, which later became the town of Kentfield. She began her education at Vassar College before returning to the Bay Area to study at the California School of Fine Arts. She studied in Paris with Antoine Bourdelle at the Grande Chaumiere. She married Robert Boardman Howard on August 5, 1930, after they worked together on the Pacific Stock Exchange building, a Miller and Pflueger architecture firm project. They had two daughters, Ellen (May 1931 – Oct 1987) and Galen (born April 1933).

On March 24, 1957, Kent died in an accident while driving on the Pacific Coast Highway in Marin County.

Adaline Kent was an alumna and a former board member (1947–1957) of the San Francisco Art Institute, and left it $10,000 to establish an annual award for promising artists from California. The prize was awarded from 1957 to 2005. Winners included Ron Nagle (1978), Wally Hedrick (1985), David Ireland (1987), Mildred Howard (1991), Clare Rojas (2004), and the last recipient, Scott Williams (2005).

Solo exhibitions

• San Francisco Art Center, 1934;
• Courvoisier Gallery, San Francisco, 1941;
• San Francisco Museum of Art (now called San Francisco Museum of Modern Art or SFMoMA), 1937, 1948, 1958;
• Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1953;
• California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1955.

• Heller, Jules; Heller, Nancy G. (2013). North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary. New York, New York: Routledge. ISBN 1135638896. 
• Carlson, David J. "Adaline Dutton Kent (1900 - 1957)". AskArt. Retrieved November 7, 2014.