Robert Overby was born in Illinois in 1935 and died in Los Angeles in 1993. In May of 2000 The UCLA Hammer Museum presented the first retrospective of his work; Robert Overby: Parallel, 1978-1969 curated by Terry Meyers. This exhibition has sparked renewed interest in Robert Overby, as evidenced by a number of acquisitions of important works by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Weatherspoon Art Gallery in North Carolina, among others.