Hildreth Meiere was born in New York City in 1892 to a household where art was an important part of life. As a teenager
she decided to become an artist and was taken to Florence, Italy to begin her studies. There she was exposed to classical
art and the great artists of the Renaissance. Upon her return to the United States she continued her studies at the Art
Students League in New York and art schools in San Francisco. After the Great War she went back to New York and
worked on Beaux Arts projects and met Bertram Goodhue. She worked on many commissions for Goodhue, her
experience as a mural painter complimenting Goodhue's belief that decoration was fundamental to monumental
architecture. Her work for Goodhue includes the mosaics of St. Bartholomew's Church in New York, the dome of the
National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., and the floors and ceilings of the Nebraska State Capitol, for which
she received the 1928 Gold Medal in Mural Painting from the Architectural League of New York. Up until her death in
1961 she acknowledged the Nebraska State Capitol as her crowning achievement.
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