Leon Gordon Miller Biography

Leon Gordon Miller

American

1917-1985

Biography

A U.S. multi-media artist, industrial designer and architect, Miller graduated in art from Kean College of New Jersey. Throughout his active career in the fine arts, he engaged simultaneously in the professional practice of design and architectural planning as president of his own industrial design corporation in Cleveland, Ohio.

As an artist, he had more than 15 solo exhibitions in various media, including painting, photography, prints, sculpture and stained glass from 1969 to 1977. Miller won sculpture, art and design awards throughout his career, including the 1973 United States Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Arts Award and the 1975 American Graphic Arts Award.

He was the author of the historical preface to Stained Glass Craft in 1973, and was a founding member of the Artists Equity Association, and its representative to the National Endowment for the Arts Conference of Associated Arts Councils in 1975. Miller was an Accredited Artist and Chairman of Union American Hebrew Congregations Accredited List of Synagogue Artists and Craftsmen. Accomplishing many major commissions, he is also represented in museum, corporate, and private collections, including the Library of Congress, and the Gertrude Stein Collection of Yale University. He was a board member, Fine Arts Advisory, Rose Art Museum.

As an Architect, he won Participation and Sculpture Awards in 1955, 1956, 1959, and 1960 at the National Gold Medal Exhibition of Architectural League of New York. Also he received a Merit Award from the National Association of Specialty Planners in 1970. He was also a board member of the Guild for Religious Arts and Architecture.

As an industrial designer, he was active in the Industrial Design Institute (IDI), serving as its president in 1960 and 1961 and its board chairman in 1962 and 1963. He received a Silver Medal Award for Outstanding Contribution to Design from IDI in 1962. In 1963, he was chairman of the New York World's Fair Student Scholarship Awards Program. He was awarded Fellowship in IDI, which was honored by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) in 1965 when IDI became part of that organization. As a member and Fellow of the Institute of Business Designers, he won its First Award in Design in 1969 and 1971. He was a U.S. delegate to the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) to Stockholm in 1959, Venice in 1961, London in 1969, Mexico in 1971, and Japan in 1973.

In community affairs, he was one of twenty-five leaders of American finance and industry to receive the Distinguished Service Award of the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in observance of the 25th Anniversary of Israel in 1973. He was a frequent guest speaker and panelist on topics dealing with the arts and the environment, and represented the U.S. abroad in Canada, Yugoslavia, and Israel, as well as for ICSID.

He received an Outstanding Arts Alumni Award in 1973 and a Doctor of Humane Letters Honorary Degree in 1974 from Kean. He also received a Doctor of Fine Arts Honorary degree from Baldwin Wallace College in 1971.  Miller died in 1997