Dan Rice b.1926 was raised in Long Beach California. A serious trumpet player by age 15 he was filling in with Woody Herman and Stan Kenton Bands when they played the Long Beach area c.1941-'43. At age 17 he joined the US Navy and for three years served in WWII. Shortly after the Navy and on a tip from his brother, he drove east and enrolled at Black Mountain College (BMC) the influential Bauhaus inspired American liberal arts college located in Asheville, North College. Originally intending to pursue music Rice quickly realized music was not his calling and enrolled in painting, drawing, design classes. During his time at BMC 1946-1956 he was both a student and later an instructor. At BMC he studied with, taught and became friends with a stunning array of talented art students & instructors including Joseph Albers, Annie Albers, Ruth Asawa, John Chamberlain, Joseph Fiore, Willem & Elaine de Kooning, Jorge Fick, Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, Buckminster Fuller, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Ben Shahn, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley. Many of his fellow BMC colleagues became close long term professional relationships/friendships. A number of books have been published on Black Mountain College and in many cases Dan Rice's name comes up in the context of these friendships, After BMC closed in 1956 Rice moved to New York and quickly found gallery representation showing in Poindexter Gallery and Stable Gallery group exhibitions. 1959 he joined the top notch Catherine Viviano Gallery who gave Rice five solo exhibitions between 1960-1970. Viviano placed many of Rice’s oils in important private & public collections. Rice first came to New York City in 1946 while a Black Mountain College student and through friendships there entered the rich artistic milieu of the New York art world often hanging for many hours at The Cedar Tavern drinking and debating art with friends Franz Kline & Robert Creeley. INn 1949-'50 LEFT BMC and enrolled at MIT study &  receive his MFA degree in architecture; then he came back to Black Mountain College in 1951 to teach and take part in a variety of teaching/advisory roles for Charle Colson the new BMC rector often organizing student art classes, art happenings, student exhibitions, poetry & instructor seminars and Black Mountain Review poetry publications up thru 1956 just before the college closed. His architecture skills came to good use and he helped design & rebuild BMC classrooms & mechanicals. At BMC the second time as an instructor Rice became especially close to Franz Kline and BMC poets/ instructors Robert Creeley & Fielding Dawson often returning to New York on weekends to see gallery & museums exhibitions and hang out at Cedar Tavern with  Kline & de Kooning, and met Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko. 

In 1957 BMC closed and Rice moved full time to NYC and began exhibiting professionally with Poindexter Gallery, Stable Gallery and five shows with Viviano thru 1970. In 1958 & 1959 Rice was hired as Rothko’s studio assistant during the creation of Rothko’s Seagram’s Museums project. Dan Rice & his family became close to the Rothko family and later worked with the estate of both Kline & Rothko after the artists died as an advisor to each artist’s estate for years forward performing important duties to insure their legacy. After Viviano Gallery closed in 1970 he continued exhibiting having solo shows at Maxwell Gallery in San Francisco, three solo shows at Nightingale Gallery in Toronto CD and university art museum exhibitions at Princeton, Yale, University of Virginia, SUNY Buffalo, U.of Connecticut, Dillard U. in New Orleans and more and taught at The art Students League and Buffalo State University. Around 1985 Dan Rice moved permanently to the Connecticut shoreline and continued to teach exhibit and held forth weekly studio classes unashamedly named 'The Friday Night Painters’ who met at his studio. He continued an active exhibitions & teaching schedule until 2001. Dan Rice died in Connecticut in 2003.

Dan Rice Fourteen Oils 1959-2001, a solo exhibition of Rice's work was presented at Philip Douglas Fine Art in 2025, the gallery's first exhibition with the Rice estate and was accompanied by an essay “Dan Rice In His Own Words”  written by the artist and provided by the Dan Rice estate. PDFA continues offering Dan Rice oils and works on paper and will be organizing future Rice exhibitions.