For #ArchivesGiftExchange, we are happy to share a Robert Penn illustration with @AugieCWS and @SDSUArchives.

Image is from the cover of the Institute of Indian Studies News Report, August 1988.

Bobby Penn graduated with a BFA from the University of South Dakota in 1974. While at USD and after his graduation, Penn worked as an art instructor and illustrator. Beginning in 1986, he pursued his painting career full-time. Penn lived and worked in Vermillion, South Dakota until his death in 1999.

Penn’s work is in several public collections, including those of the Smithsonian Institute and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and he was featured in more than a dozen solo exhibitions. Also, he created four commissioned murals. In 1992, Robert Penn received the South Dakota Governor’s Award for Distinction in Creative Achievement in the Arts. In 1998, he was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame.

More Robert Penn illustrations can be found on the covers of newsletters in the Archives and Special Collections, the Digital Library of South Dakota, or the South Dakota State Government Publications. I have not been successful in finding any of the illustrations he did for the USD Medical School.

The National Archives sponsors #ArchivesHashtagParty once a month, and December’s topic is #ArchivesGiftExchange. They invite archives to “gift” each other with the most intriguing, captivating documents and artifacts from our treasure troves.

Penn biographical information from Robert Penn : Retrospective. University Art Galleries, University of South Dakota, 1993 and The University of South Dakota Directory of Living Alumni, 1982. Alumni Association of the University of South Dakota, 1982.