With a career spanning nearly five decades, Glenna Goodacre has become well-known for her bronze sculptures, specializing in sensitive portraits of children in action. Another subject matter is American Indians including the New Mexico Pueblo Indians exemplified by her depiction of a sacred ceremony, The Basket Dance.
Likely her most important commission is the women’s memorial in Washington D.C. commemorating the women who served in the Vietnam War. Another prestigious work, “After the Ride,” a seven-foot high statue of President Ronald Reagan, was unveiled in Fall, 1998 at the Reagan Library in Southern California. Goodacre is also famously known for her rendering of Sacagawea, the Native American interpreter for explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, on the new dollar coin issued by the U.S. Mint in 2000.
She was born in Texas, graduated from Colorado College, and then studied at the Art Students League in New York. From 1983, her home has been in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
She has won numerous awards from the National Sculpture Society and Allied Artists of America as well as the Gold Medal from the National Academy of Design of which she is an Associate member. In 1993, she was awarded the Knickerkbocker Artists’ Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement in American Art.