Carol S. Wald was an American artist who was also widely known for her talents as an illustrator. Her collages and paintings appeared in Time

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

, Fortune

Fortune (magazine)

Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...

, and Ms, and on the covers of Business Week, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and Saturday Review.
Carol Wald was born in Detroit, Michigan

Detroit, Michigan

Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...

, where she began studying art at age twelve. At age sixteen, while still a student at Detroit's Cass Technical High School

Cass Technical High School

The Cass Tech Technicians football team is a high school football program in Division 1 Public School League, representing the prestigious Cass Technical High School in Detroit, MI. Cass Tech High School has long been recognized nationwide for its extraordinary football program dating back to its...

, her talent was recognized by mayor Albert Cobo

Albert Cobo

Albert Eugene Cobo was an American politician who served as Mayor of Detroit from 1950-1957. He was the next to last Republican to hold that office.-Biography:Albert Cobo was born in Detroit on October 2, 1893...

, and in 1954 she was awarded a four year scholarship at the Art School of the Society of Arts and Crafts

College for Creative Studies

College for Creative Studies is an art education institution in the United States and was cited by BusinessWeek as one of the 60 best design schools in the world. It is a private, fully accredited, four-year college located in Detroit, Michigan...

 in Detroit. In 1960, the Detroit Institute of Arts

Detroit Institute of Arts

The Detroit Institute of Arts is a renowned art museum in the city of Detroit. In 2003, the DIA ranked as the second largest municipally owned museum in the United States, with an art collection valued at more than one billion dollars...

 purchased one of her paintings, "Children On Stilts". In 1963, she studied under Ben Shahn

Ben Shahn

Ben Shahn was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He is best known for his works of social realism, his left-wing political views, and his series of lectures published as The Shape of Content.-Biography:...

 at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine

Skowhegan, Maine

Skowhegan is the county seat of Somerset County, Maine, United States. As of the 2000 census, the town population was 8,824. Every August, Skowhegan hosts the annual Skowhegan State Fair, the oldest continuous state fair in the United States...

, and in 1967 she studied at the Cranbrook Educational Community in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

Bloomfield Hills is a city in Oakland County of the U.S. state of Michigan, northwest of downtown Detroit. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 3,869...

. In 1964 she was given a ten-year retrospective exhibition at the Flint Institute of Arts in Flint, Michigan

Flint, Michigan

Flint is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and is located along the Flint River, northwest of Detroit. The U.S. Census Bureau reports the 2010 population to be placed at 102,434, making Flint the seventh largest city in Michigan. It is the county seat of Genesee County which lies in the...

.

By 1970 the National Gallery of Art

National Gallery of Art

The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...

 and the Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

 Museum of American Art had each purchased paintings by her for their permanent collections.
She left Detroit for New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 in 1971, where she emerged as one of the nation's top illustrators. In 1975 she was awarded a gold medal for editorial illustration from the Society of Illustrators

Society of Illustrators

The Society of Illustrators is a professional society based in New York City. Founded in 1901, the mission of the Society is to promote the art and appreciation of illustration, as well as its history...

 in New York. In 1976, she was commissioned by the Ford administration to paint America's official Bicentennial painting, which is on display at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum

Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum

The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum is part of the Presidential Libraries System of the National Archives and Records Administration, a federal agency. Unlike most other presidential libraries and museums, Ford's are two geographically separate buildings. The Gerald R. Ford Presidential...

 in Grand Rapids.

In the 1980s, a class reunion organizer for Cass Tech put her in touch with fellow alumnus, the filmmaker Hermann Tauchert. They had actually met in high school 25 years earlier, when they dated each other's friends. Romance bloomed and for two or three years, they conducted a long-distance love affair, with Tauchert in Detroit and Wald in New York. But finally in 1986, Wald moved back to Detroit and they married.

In 1990, worried about the high levels of crime in Detroit, they moved to Burlington, Ontario

Burlington, Ontario

Burlington , is a city located in Halton Region at the western end of Lake Ontario. Burlington is part of the Greater Toronto Area, and is also included in the Hamilton Census Metropolitan Area. Physically, Burlington lies between the north shore of Lake Ontario and the Niagara Escarpment...

.

In 1997, Wald was diagnosed with cancer; three years later, she died in the Ian Anderson House, Oakville, on September 8, 2000.

The Cranbrook Academy of Art, located just outside Detroit, will be the repository of Wald's collections and writings.

Works held in permanent collections

• The National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
• The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan
• Dennos Museum Center at Northwestern Michigan College
  Northwestern Michigan College
  Founded in 1951, Northwestern Michigan College, known as NMC to local residents, is a community college in Traverse City, Grand Traverse County, Michigan. Its annual enrollment is around 5,100 students...
  
  , Traverse City, Michigan
  Traverse City, Michigan
  Traverse City is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the county seat of Grand Traverse County, although a small portion extends into Leelanau County. It is the largest city in the 21-county Northern Michigan region. The population was 14,674 at the 2010 census, with 143,372 in the Traverse...
  
  
• The Minneapolis Museum of Art, St. Paul, MN
• Utah Museum of Fine Arts at Utah University, Salt Lake City, UT
• The Museum of American Illustration, New York, NY
• Newport Performing Arts Center, Newport, OR
• Grand Valley State University, John C. Kennedy Hall of Engineering, Grand Rapids, MI