Michael Kelly Williams

This work on paper depicts an uptown concert has just ended. Musicians and guests are leaving the venue and slowly moving down the block. Music is in the air.

Provenance:  Courtesy of the Artist

Michael Kelly Williams grew up in Detroit, Michigan, where he attended Cass Technical  High School. He graduated with a BFA in printmaking from the University of Michigan and  an MFA in sculpture from Brooklyn College. He went on to study and teach in New York City  at Robert Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop. Williams was also an educator with the New  York City Department of Education system in the Bronx for many years. His work has been  exhibited nationally and internationally in China, Morocco, Canada, India and Japan.  Williams has had residencies at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Materials for the Arts, Long  Island City, Wave Hill, and most recently on Governors Island through the National  Academy of Design. He received the first Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop Legacy  Publishing Fellowship at the Elizabeth Foundation and was awarded a Pollock-Krasner  Grant. Williams’s work can be found in several museums and art institutions, such as The  Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY; The Library of Congress,  Washington, DC; The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; and the Philadelphia Museum of  Art. He has been commissioned for numerous public art installations, including the MTA Arts  & Design Intervale Subway Station in the Bronx, as well as PS82 Hammond School in  Queens, NY.