Nancy Reddin Kienholz
Nancy Reddin Kienholz (December 9, 1943 – August 7, 2019) was an American mixed‑media artist known for installation art, assemblage, photography, and lenticular printing. She lived in Hope, Idaho.
She was born in Los Angeles, the youngest of three children. Her father, Thomas Reddin, was a police officer who later became chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, and her mother was Betty Parsons Reddin. Nancy married for the first time at age 19 and had a daughter, Christine, in 1964; the marriage lasted two years. She had no formal art training and worked various jobs in Los Angeles before meeting her future partner.
Nancy met artist Edward Kienholz at a party in 1972, and they began collaborating the same year. Their first joint work was The Middle Islands No. 1. For many years Ed received sole credit, but in 1981 he announced that works after 1972 should be credited to "Kienholz," acknowledging their collaboration.
In 1973, the couple received a DAAD grant to work in West Berlin. They moved there with their children and created works for the exhibition there, later dividing their time between Berlin and Hope, Idaho. They had studios in both Berlin and Idaho.
Edward Kienholz received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1976, and their work was especially praised in Europe. Ed had diabetes and died in 1994 of a heart attack in Sandpoint, Idaho; Nancy drove his coffin, placed in a 1940 Packard car, to the gravesite. After his death, Nancy continued to work in multiple media, organized major exhibitions of their collaborative work, and created solo works of her own, including photography and lenticular prints. She died on August 7, 2019, in Houston, at age 75.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 17:16 (CET).