Renée Stout is a contemporary artist known for assemblage

Assemblage (art)

Assemblage is an artistic process. In the visual arts, it consists of making three-dimensional or two-dimensional artistic compositions by putting together found objects...

 artworks dealing with her personal history and African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 heritage.

Born in Junction City, Kansas

Kansas

Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...

, Stout lives and works in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 and received a Bachelor in Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....

, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1980. She has participated in numerous exhibitions including several exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...

 in Washington, D.C. and at the De Beyerd Museum in the Netherlands. Her work is in numerous collections including The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...

, San Francisco, CA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI, and the Baltimore Museum of Art

Baltimore Museum of Art

The Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, was founded in 1914. Built in the Roman Temple style, the Museum is home to an internationally renowned collection of 19th-century, modern, and contemporary art. Founded in 1914 with a single painting, the BMA today has 90,000 works...

, Baltimore, MD. Her awards include two Pollock Krasner Foundation Awards, The Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Regional Visual Arts Fellowship, a Tryon Center for Visual Arts Residency, and the Driskell Prize given by the High Museum of Art.