Richard Cleaver received his bachelor of fine arts degree from Maryland Institute College of Art and his master of arts degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The artist has been exhibiting in group exhibitions throughout the mid-Atlantic since 1990, and his work has been the subject of solo shows at The Noyes Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, and the American University Museum, among others.
Cleaver is the recipient of numerous awards and grants including several Maryland State Arts Council grants since 1992, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1994, the inaugural Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Arts Award in 2003, a grant from the Franz and Virginia Bader Fund in 2008, and the Mary Sawyers Baker Prize in 2010. Solo exhibitions of the artist's work have been presented at the Steinbaum Krauss Gallery in New York, and Cleaver is represented in corporate, private, and public collections throughout the United States including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Crocker Art Museum, the de Young in San Francisco, and the Delaware Art Museum.
