Charles King Steiner was born in Champaign, Illinois and grew up in Chevy Chase, MD. Finding his love for expressionist style painting at an early age, Charles went on to study painting at both Cornell University and George Washington University. His large-scale paintings focus on his family, friends, and home, exploring the changes that occur in each through the years. Despite disparate subject matter, Steiner's work is unified through a lens of "Translation Painting" in that much of his work has concerned the conversion of one medium/image to another. This has included the "translation" of the act of garden planting to tile, stained glass to enamel, marriage ritual to assemblage art, and ceramics into painting.

 

Charles began his professional career in New York City, where in addition to exhibiting artwork in the booming 1970's art scene, he was awarded a 1977-1978 Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which he later joined as an Assistant and then Associate Museum Educator. Following his time at the Met, Charles joined the Princeton University Art Museum as the Assistant and later the Associate Director of the Museum, before becoming the Executive Director of the Wichita Art Museum in Kansas from 2000 to 2011. From 2012-2018, he was an adjunct faculty member of the Dept. of Graphic Design and Studio Art, University of Arkansas, Fort Smith.
 

Charles Steiner's paintings and installations have been shown across the country, and are included in such important corporate collections as New York Health and Hospital Corporation (New York, NY); Montgomery County Government Collection (Rockville, MD), 3M Corporation (Minneapolis, MN); Gates Enterprises (Wichita, KS); the Fort Smith Arkansas Regional Airport Commission (Fort Smith, AR); the Brooklyn Art Library (Brooklyn, NY); and Emprise Bank (Wichita, KS), among others.

 

Steiner's works are also held in private collections throughout the United States and abroad: Barcelona, Spain; Hartest, England; Boston, MA; Cincinnati, OH; Katonah, NY; Evanston, IL; Houston, TX; Madison, WI; New Rochelle, NY; New York, NY; Princeton, NJ; Queens, NY; Saint Louis, MO; San Francisco, CA; Washington, DC; and Wichita, KS among many more.

 

With a career stretching over five decades, Charles explored the dynamics of home, translation, and expressionism. After he and his wife, noted art historian Dr. Mary B. Shepard, retired in 2021, they returned to Chevy Chase, MD where Charles continued to paint and help Mary with the gardening.

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Charles King Steiner passed away on January 9, 2025. Charles was beloved for his creativity, kindness, support of others, and wacky sense of humor. His life-long dedication to the arts, especially in providing accessibility to museum visitors, has left a profound impact. He was predeceased by his parents and is survived by his wife, daughters Hope and Frances (Kieran Coe), his grandchildren Brad and Kate, his siblings Dan and Paula (David Hellman), brother-in-law David Shepard (Laura), and many beloved nieces and nephews.

 

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