Portrait of James A. Michener

Beth Schoen is an Austin-based sculptor and educator who creates commemorative portraits in terracotta and bronze. She studied at the Elisabet Ney Sculpture Conservatory in Austin and the Loveland Academy of Fine Arts in Loveland, Colorado. In addition to Michener, Schoen has made portrait busts of other notable subjects including Willie Nelson and Darrell K. Royal. This bust of James A. Michener, author and philanthropist, is one of an edition of ten. Others from this edition are held by the University of Northern Colorado; The James Michener Art Museum (Doylestown, PA); and the Michener Center for Writers, The University of Texas at Austin, all institutions Michener supported during his lifetime. Michener and his wife Mari shaped the Blanton Museum as it exists today through gifts of their collection of approximately 300 twentieth-century American paintings and $10 million to fund the construction of the museum building.