Michael Kelly Williams

This work on paper is a portrait of an adolescent girl. She wears an ornate hair ornament and a collar

Provenance:  Courtesy of the Artist

Michael Kelly Williams was born in Neuilly-Sur-Seine, France, on March 8, 1950. He is the son of the artist Kelly Williams. Williams grew up in Detroit, Michigan, where he attended Cass Technical High School. He graduated with honors from the University of Michigan in 1975 and was Artist-in-Residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem from 1986 to 1987. In 1988, he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Williams was the art director for “Daughters of the Dust,” a 1991 PBS-American Playhouse Production directed by Julie Dash. He graduated in 1996 with an M.F.A. in Sculpture from Brooklyn College. Williams has also been an educator with the New York City Department of Education system for many years. His work can be found in several museums and institutions such as The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York; The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He has been commissioned for various permanent installations including two mosaic murals located at the Intervale Subway Station (2/5) in the Bronx as well as several glass murals in P.S. 82 Hammond School in Queens, New York. Since retiring from teaching in 2016, he has been an Artist-in-Residence at Materials for the Arts and at Wave Hill and was the first to be awarded the Robert Blackburn Legacy Publishing Fellowship from the Elizabeth Foundation.