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Boyd Mefferd

American sculptor (born 1941)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ107625889
Source-derived summary

Boyd Mefferd is an American artist born in 1941. He helped pioneer the use of electrical light in visual arts and was part of the Art and Technology movement in the late 1960s, which employed technology such as electronics, aerospace, and computers in the creation of art.

Exhibitions

Select group exhibitions

Boyd Mefferd's first significant exhibition was Sound, Light, Silence, a group show in 1966 at the Nelson Gallery of Art in Kansas City, known today as the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Artforum reviewed the show, which was curated by Ralph T. Coe and focused on art that employed light or sound. Mefferd's contribution was Untitled Electronic Device, a series of polished aluminum cubes with stripes of colored plexiglass, illuminated from within by sign lightbulbs.

Untitled Electronic Device was also shown in Lights in Orbit at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York, NY in 1967.

Mefferd was exhibited in The Magic Theater in 1968. Also curated by Ralph T. Coe at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, this exhibit focused on environmental or "psychic" art. Boyd created an installation that employed strobe lights, titled Strobe Lighted Floor.

Mefferd was one of eight artists to represent the United States at Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan.

Editorial summary

“Boyd Mefferd” enters the record as american sculptor (born 1941). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Boyd, Mefferd and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1941, 1966, 1967, 1968—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1941. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Boyd, Mefferd and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Boyd Mefferd” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Boyd, Mefferd and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q107625889. VIAF identifies the subject as 169003637. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941, 1966, 1967 and 1968.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Boyd Mefferd” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.