Peter Richards

Peter Richards is a senior artist emeritus at the Exploratorium. He worked with Exploratorium founder Frank Oppenheimer to set up arts programming and served as arts program director through 1998. He is best known for creating a wave-activated sound sculpture located on the San Francisco waterfront. Peter has permanent outdoor installations at Artpark in Lewiston, New York, and in several sites in California and Washington. He recently completed a major work for the Valley Metro Light Rail System in Phoenix, Arizona. He has taught at the Center for Experimental and Interdisciplinary Arts at San Francisco State University, Ecole d’Art Aix en Provence, at the San Francisco Art Institute, and Stanford University. He is a cofounder of McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, North Carolina, and was a research fellow at the Studio for Creative Inquiry, Carnegie Mellon University. He is past chair of the Alliance of Artist Communities Board of Trustees. Currently, he’s collaborating with Sue Richards on several public art commissions. Peter received a BA in sculpture from Colorado College and an MFA in sculpture from the Rinehart School of Sculpture.